Do The Right Thing
What do black people have? What is it that is theirs? What possessions do they hold and desire to keep and to preserve? Do they have anything worthy of a legacy?
A politically charged film will receive a politically charged criticism. The answer to all of the above questions is an abject “nothing”. The reasons are well-documented to anyone who bothers to investigate the nature of this answer. To point the finger at the malpracticed manufacturing of society by state intervention into the organic movements of society is not what anyone wants to hear, because it shifts the responsibilities of the legacy of blacks back into their court. In the present day – including the late 80’s as filmed – it is too much a convenience for blacks to embrace an identity of meekness. Their legacy, which they wear as a ludicrous badge of honor, is that they were once slaves, and their plight is because of that happenstance.
Again, paternal investment, which is the foundation of civilization, is the most elegant solution to the problem of the black man, excavating his soul from the troubles that arise in Do The Right Thing. And clearly that requires a destruction of the violent paternity of Statism that infects every aspect of the randomly selected black life. Bad decision-making is embraced in the welfare system with education included, in the most extremely absurd demonstration of the failure of Christian morality.
Yet to free blacks from the clamps of violent architecture which stunts the blossom of their petals is to create an environment where their failure is their own. As common with the Last Man, this is an act of courage which is flatly denied. Thus, the blacks are content blaming their direness on a mythological narrative. Decades of poverty grinding by failed social policy has created this psychotic consciousness, where they are nothing without feeling proud of being failures, i.e. Black identity is to fail.
This is the backdrop of the racial tensions in a Black neighborhood in New York portrayed in Do The Right Thing. The escalation of tensions arises from the complete ignorance of the awareness of property that comes from a successful cultural upbringing. Indeed, the fact a Black man demands another to change his business to cater to his needs is the truest sense of the alien society Blacks live under, completely exotic to the basic understanding of what makes civilization work. Were he to be a member of a functioning society, he would instantly recognize the hysteria in demanding a property-owner to change his style of ownership. It does not belong to the Black man, plain and simple. If he does not like it, he can leave. (Of course that would be a racist alternative)
An accomplice to the climactic agitation in the film also hints at this complete obliviousness to standards. Radio Raheeb enters into another person’s house of ownership in a cacophonous manner with his boombox. The nature of etiquette and respect do not enter his mind. He acts agitated when Sal, the owner of the business, informs him that there are rules in society. Radio Raheeb cannot even muster the courtesy to ask with politeness for pizza.
Why does Sal tolerate such trash? Why doesn’t he refuse service? Because he is a sympathizer. “These people” have put food on his table for 25 years. If he had a problem with their culture now, with their alien unrestraint, he would not have succeeded in serving them for so long. In other words, he accepts that this is how you do business with Blacks.
Blacks, however, are not unique in their unrestraint. This is the mark of impoverishment. A lack of discipline leads to a lack of proper orientation toward the future. And such a lack of orientation, whereby the emphasis is in acting in the present impetuously, leads to a failure to accumulate anything substantial in the world. Only the artistic talent can profit off of such impetuousness, and even then, the successful artist has an ambition toward the future that fuels his desire to record a track and to get out of hell. Such poor decision making can be seen with bringing a child into the world without any proper foundation for him to succeed in the world. Mookie is a pizza delivery “boy”, who barely can make rent, yet he has a toddler with a neighborhood girl. This only exemplifies the lack of necessity, in a Statist society, of the poor to build families. Bad worldly decision making is rewarded with Christian morality.
Unrestrained picks up steam when a boycott is demanded on Sal’s restaurant because he fails to comply with the personality of the rabble-maker. Again, he is oblivious to the fact that “his hood” does not penetrate its jurisdiction – which is purely a social one – into a private business. The boombox returns with this boycott, and Sal reaches a breaking point. He destroys the stereo system, and the only identify Radio Raheeb to escape failure. The ensuing fight creates symbolic police-brutality, used cavalierly to highlight the desperation of Blacks. The “power that be” which they retaliate against is Sal’s pizzeria, the near-sighted cause of the injustice done onto their people. Of course Blacks cannot see the true culprit as the system which they depend upon for survival. Because the Black man is another shade of the Last Man.
Mookie proves this thesis when he cannot comprehend why Sal is so Despondent when his business is torched. “You have insurance, you know the deal.” “I built this business.” Ownership. Possession. Legacy. Words that are absent in the Black lexicon.