Critical Race Theory In Spike Lee's Film Do The Right Thing

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Critical race theory and its effects
Critical race theory emerged in the 1970s as a result of previous movements in the United States, such as the civil rights movement. “As a number of lawyers, activist, and legal scholars across the country realized, more or less simultaneously, that the heady advances of the civil rights era of the 1960s had stalled and, in many respects were being rolled back.” (author's last name and then comma date). Everything dealing with racial and legal institutions in literature, from movies to books to articles to laws, can be traced back to critical race theory. In this paper, I will discuss the critics' opponents and representatives of the theory. Critical race theory is still relevant after all these years because …show more content…

They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account." in the belief that the theory only fosters feelings of hatred and anger toward white Americans in the hope of achieving equity and equality they lose the crucial essence of it. Nevertheless, they claim that Critical Race Theory stifles progress by labeling all white people as oppressors and all black people as helpless victims. They discuss how the issue with critical race theory is not its definition, but whether we should be taught it at …show more content…

Spike Lee portrays the main antagonist of the film Sal as a racist. He had written Sal out to be a racist throughout the film because of his constant spew of anti-black rhetoric. It is very apparent in his actions and speech that he is supposed to be a racist but when Aiello the man who plays Sal interprets the clearly racist character as “a nice guy,” “and he sees people as equal.” You start to think differently about what people consider racism and what they consider not to be racism. Furthermore, Aiello Starts to talk about one of the most climactic moments of the film when Sal destroys Radio Raheem's boom box Sal looks to find the most insulting words he could to throw at those who made him angry.” As a result, Aiello argues, his character “ends up acting like a racist, even though he is not one.” Kelli Marshall shows us the different ways that things can be interoperated between different races when he shows/tells his white students how Aiello interoperated the character he portrayed in the film they agreed and came up with “similar conclusions.” Even though he often refers to his black customers as “others” throughout the film in order to sort of distance himself from them. Distancing himself from black people. Sal is essentially white America thinking that things that happened in the past stayed in the past and that they do not have lingering effects on

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