As Michael has stated, let's focus the discussion back on the film without personal references towards other members.
Crawdaddy
Crawdaddy
When I look in the mirror and see my balding head, I don't like what I see, but I don't deny the reality of what I see. But if I were to look in the mirror and see that I was suddenly 9 feet tall, I would question the mirror, and indeed further investigation would show it to be a funhouse mirror, not one accurately reflecting reality.It's a lot harder to draw these conclusions when the "mirror" in question is just a metaphor. "Mirror" is not a very good metaphor for describing what Spike Lee is creating, but it is apt in describing the effect that it might have on some people. Spike Lee's film is the most in-depth attempt I've seen at capturing different perspectives--different racial prejudices, different assumptions about other people and their racial prejudices. It might be interesting to draw a map of all the characters and the various in-group out-group relationships that they have.
As for racism, george, in your arguments you seem to be neglecting the fact that the people who claim that black racial aggression against white people cannot be appropriately labeled "racism" are using a different definition than you.
More importantly, you limit your understanding of yourself in thinking that these concepts are simple. Sure, if a bunch of black people hang a white person and cover their body with racial slurs (how many times has this happened?), it is a most heinous act of racial aggression, but the social statement is quite different from a bunch of white people hanging a black person and covering his body with racial slurs (again, how many times has this happened?). These events are not occurring in a vacuum. The people committing these acts know that the acts are treated differently in the media, in the courts, amongst the police, and in the perception of the TV-viewers. Their motivations are most likely quite different. In fact, the only thing that the two actions have in common are the physical aspects and the moral reprehensibility.
At least our discussion here has not gone into that kind of tangent.Wellllll...............
It's a shame (but not a surprise, in light of the strong feelings people have on the subject) that a discussion on this film's topics can't go for too long without people getting personal in their comments.
I don't think Mookie did the right thing, he encouraged violence in a heated situation. To say that he tried to focus the violence on a store rather than people is presumptuous because once a crowd is incited to destructive motives how can you control or predict what or who gets swept up in the wave? The situation he instigated could have easily caused the death of any of the Italian or Asian characters and this in my opinion is not the right thing to do...the talk they had on the stoop at the end was the right thing to do but Mookie and Sal are merely lucky that they could have this talk, had the events of the previous night went the way it probably would have in real life Mookie would be talking to the police about what the hell he was thinking when he started the riot and I don't think that his speech would have had much impact in light of the death it would have caused had things went differently.
IMO Mookie lucked out and that isn't "the right thing" to count on in light of the film's apparent aspirations.
I may very well have ones based on income or clothing or musical preference , but those are hardly racial biases.That's the trick, you see. Your biases based on income, clothing, and/or musical preference are going to have racial correlations. This is, of course, not the same thing as having a racial bias, but if you string together the biases that a given person has, generally speaking, you will come up with an overlying racial bias (by which I mean a racial bias that a person does not necessarily have directly, but which they in effect have).
Let's take a simple example. Let's say I enjoy (and am biased towards people that enjoy) Johnny Cash, Michael Crichton, Nirvana, Jim Carrey, and J. Crew. Now, obviously there are black people that enjoy these things. Obviously there are white people that don't enjoy these things. The question is, is there a statistical racial correlation between those who like them and those that don't. I suspect there is (if you disagree, then we'll have to wrestle and start over again). Now, I have nothing against someone that prefers Wu-Tang Clan (let's say I don't like Wu-Tang Clan), but I'm less likely to connect with them than someone I can talk to about Nirvana. I don't have any clear racial biases, but in effect, one evolves out of the biases that I do have.