Do the Right Thing

For this post I have decided to analyze and decide once and for all if Sal, the pizza store owner, was a racist. Up until the end of the movie when he let our the n-word, I felt there is no way that his character was meant to be a racist. After him calling Radio-Raheem the n-word I decided that I needed to re-evaluate whether or not he is a racist. To do this I think it would be best to take all of the reasons that people feel he was a racist and prove why they really aren't as they seem.

One argument that people in class had was that when Sal was talking to Peno about how he loved feeding the people in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood he referred to the them as "they" or "them" which some thought made Sal look like a racist. While at first glance this seems to be something that someone would use to make another group of people sound inferior or different, there really isn't another way to put it without using the word "them". If you really think about it there really wasn't any other way for Sal to make reference to the people in that neighborhood without using the word they and those kids.

Probably the best argument that people had for calling Sal a racist was when he used the n-word towards Radio-Raheem at the end of the movie. In my mind I really don't think that using that word was something he had been thinking of saying and planning deep inside his head, but instead the result of his anger and the reaction to what Radio-Raheem was doing. I don't think Sal really felt that way about the people that lived in the neighborhood but was reacting to the events happening right in front of him and was very angry at Radio-R. Therefore I don't think he really meant what he said when he lashed out at Radio-Raheem.

Overall I really don't think that Sal was a racist, but just a person trying to make a living in a rough neighborhood. He didn't show many other signs of racism throughout the movie and the ones that he may have shown can be proven to be misleading. In the end I do not feel that Sal was a racist and really enjoyed watching this movie.