Do The Right Thing vs. How Bigger Was Born

In Do The Right Thing and How Bigger Was Born, both Bigger and Mookie were forced to live in neighboorhoods charactarized by being populated by people of color. Richard Wright, author of Native Son, believed Bigger acted violently towards Mary Dalton, a white young lady, because he had been restricted to live in the boundaries of the South Side of Chicago for his entire life. Bigger knew of no propper way to treat those whom he had lived apart from because there was no integration between people of color, and white people.Wright described this segregation as two different worlds, a "white world and a black world" (437), and the whies believed they oought to never mix. Therefore, Bigger never learned to treat a white man a certain way other than by what he represented; superiority to blacks.Bigger had assumed MAry and Jan's comments towards him and hand gestures were an act of bullying, simply mocking Bigger's skin color. Therefore, Bigger disliked them because he had not experienced any events where whites had rrespectfully interacted with him, and so he did not know of Mary and Jan's true intentions. Similarly, Mookie lived in an area of Brooklyn highly populated by colored people. Therefore him and his friends disliked whites because they had formed a stereotype of the whole race being more arrogant. For example, when Buggin' Out is walking down the street and a white man scuffs up Buggin' Out's new, white Air Jordans, Buggin' Out and his friends call him out for picking on a black person, and tell him to "Go back to Massachutes!". However, the white man scuffed up Buggin' Out's shoes on accident, not because he wanted to bully a black man, and furthermore, the white man was born in Brooklyn, not Massachutes. The boys had not experienced many encounters with white people, other than hearing about whites intentionally harming blacks. Therefore, Buggin' Out and his friends had assumed the white man acted a certain way because of his skin color and what it represented. Also, both Mookie and Bigger worked for white men with a lot of power in the neighboorhoods they lived in. Sal's Famous Pizzeria had provided food services for an entire community of colored people for years, and so the people were reliant on him to eat. Similarily, Mr. Dalton owned the South Side Real Estate Company which gave blacks "cheap" housing in a designated area of Chicago. Wright described how Bigger was "caught up in the tense grind of struggling for bread" (440), and so his mother suggested getting a job so he could get enough money for his daily needs. Mookie also faced many financial struggles, having to support his girlfriend, son, and himself. However, unlike Bigger, Mookie sought to recieve money on his own, without someone telling him to find a job. Mookie was externally motivated by money, and yet Bigger had nothing externally motivating, which he strived to work for. Ultimately, this is why Mookie experienced more self control in aggrivating situations such the first time Buggin' Out requested to see black people on Sal's wall of fame. Instead, voicing his agreement to Sal, he excorted Buggin' Out out of the pizzeria, so he would not risk loosing his job, and his source of income. However, after accidently murdering Mary, Bigger acted in a way not in his best interest. He had no motivation to keep his job and so he harmed Mary's remains rather than admitting to his accidental murder. If he had done what was in the best interest of his job, and told the Daltons, perhaps his consequence would not have been so extreme.

Do The Right Thing was a powerful and inspiring movie, which portrayed situations of racial conflict and how it affected a colored community. One part that particularily stood out to me was the rebellious distruction of Sal's Famous Pizzeria and how the group's actions towards destroying the pizzeria erlated to the two quotes at the end of the movie. Martin Luther King Jr. explained how non-violence is key to solving racial conflict. On the other hand, Malcom X believed in self-defense by means of violence when necessary, and considered it "intelligent". I think the reason Spike Lee chose those two quotes at the end of the movie was to force the reader to choose which black leader's idea was best. The destruction of Sal's pizzeria was an example of Malcom X's violent ideals. Though the situation resulted in the arrests and harming of many blacks, they were able to stand up for themselves and what their people believed in.  Ultimately, it was a question of whether or not action would have been the "Right" thing to do. In my opinion, even if the community did not react violently to the death of Radio Raheem, eventually tension would have still caused the eventual distruction of Sal's pizzeria. However, they gained nothing from their violence. The community's favorite hang-out place was destroyed, a white man was left with only the remains of his sacred business, and pictures of blacks were never added to Sal's wall of fame.