Do The Right Thing
“I’m gonna kill somebody today.”
I’ve been fighting with my favorite cousin ever since she entered the world. During her first birthday, while everyone else wore paper party hats and ate cake, I popped her balloon and yelled, ‘Bitch’ at the top of my lungs. I was envious even at two years old. As we entered our teenage years, my cousin and I exchanged fist fights for earnest, sophisticated debate. The longest argument, thirty-plus years and counting, centers Radio Raheem and Sal’s Famous Pizzeria of Do The Right Thing* movie fame.
“What do you think Spike Lee was tryna say? Did Mookie do the right thing by breaking Sal’s window?” She asked this just last week.
The only people who’ve posed this question to the director have been white. White folk and my cousin. She sees the answer to the film’s conflict as non-binary. Not right versus wrong. For her, it’s complicated. Now, I’m usually down for nuance, but not in this case. I’ve been Team Trash Can since 1989.
“When a subject is highly controversial — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.”
Reallocating funds away from a militarized, deadly police force is absolutely essential, but killer cops are symptomatic of a killer culture. The entire country is knee-deep in the muck of anti-black racism. Every system. Every institution. Every human. Every thang needs to change. Beginning with being honest about what we value. This whole thing with my cousin reemerged after a phone conversation I had with someone else back home in California. I live abroad, so this person was filling me in on damage done to stores during protests. A sushi restaurant set on fire. A jeweler’s windows smashed. Patagonia graffitied. The woman also shared concerns about her own safety, but never once acknowledged the reason people were in the streets. Never once uttered a word about the movement for Black lives.
“Motherfuck a window. Radio Raheem is dead.”
Currency is a construct — including what we treasure and whom we don’t. Culture is a construct — including the police, the justice system, jails and prisons. We erected this way of doing and being so we can demolish it. The Black Lives Matter call to reimagine community policing beckons our collective creativity. It invites humanity’s muse forward. It demands the public wake up and work up something new. It asks us to do what artists do every damn day — start with a blank slate and envision better.
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*Do The Right Thing is filmmaker Spike Lee’s response to the murder of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, killed by New York City police officers in 1983. The movie is streaming for free through June 29, 2020.
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Written by Story Rebels founder Malika Ali Harding
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