• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I think Jewish people are very diverse but they are very unified, on a lot of things. You talk about Israel: Jewish people are unified on the state of Israel.

You’ve never heard people argue like Jews argue about what to do about it, or how to deal with Israel.

I know Jewish people are more unified than black people, I know that.

Why do you think that is the case, historically?

I don’t want to get into the whole Jewish-black thing.

I’m not asking about Jewish-black relations, I’m asking why you think Jews are more unified than blacks.

As far as America is concerned? Because I don’t think Jews have ever been taught to hate themselves the way black people have. That’s the whole key: self-hatred. That’s not to say that Jewish people haven’t been persecuted. I’m not saying that. But they haven’t been taught to hate themselves to the level black people have been. When you’re persecuted, it’s natural for people to come together; but when you’re also taught at the same time that you’re the lowest form of life on earth, that you’re subhuman, then why would you want to get together with other people like that? Who do you hate? Yourself.

‘Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads,’ your thesis film, brings up the problem of economic self-reliance. What kind of economic—

I don’t really have a program. All I’m saying is that black people for too long haven’t really thought of owning businesses. That’s the key. Because when you own businesses, you have more control and you can do what you want. That was one of the key things about Do the Right Thing—the whole thing about Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, between Sal and Buggin’ Out. Buggin’ Out rightfully felt that Sal should have the decency to at least have some black people up on the Wall of Fame, since all his income is derived from people in the community who are black and Hispanic. Sal had, to me, a more valid point: This is my motherfucking pizzeria, and I can do what I want to do. When you open your own restaurant, you can do what you want. Of course, now Buggin’ Out countered by trying to organize a boycott of Sal’s, which has always been one of our ways of fighting that type of thinking. But in the case of Buggin’ Out, it didn’t work.

A boycott takes patience, organization, determination—

And more than rhetoric, and that’s something that Buggin’ Out didn’t have.

It’s sad that the fight is over a symbol when the economic realities are so much more significant. You can spend all your time trying to boycott a Korean deli in Brooklyn—

Black people should have their own fruit and vegetable stands in Flatbush. I’d be crazy to spend a year out there boycotting that one Korean place! That doesn’t make any sense to me.

How many people have asked you, “Does Mookie do the right thing?”

How many people are there in New York City?

And what’s your answer to them?

Black people never ask that. It’s only white people.

Why’s that?

Because black people understand perfectly why Mookie threw the garbage can through the window. No black person has ever asked me, “Did Mookie do the right thing?” Never. Only white people. White people are like, “Oh, I like Mookie so much up to that point. He’s a nice character. Why’d he have to throw the garbage can through the window?” Black people, there’s no question in their minds why he does that.

Yeah, but why you do something and whether what you do is right are very different things. I know why he does it but—

But only white people want to know why he does it. I spoke at twenty-five universities last year, and that’s all I ever got asked. “Did Mookie do the right thing?”

What do you tell them?

I feel at the time he did. Mookie is doing it in response to the police murdering Radio Raheem, with the infamous Michael Stewart choke hold, in front of his face—also knowing this is not the first time that something like this has happened, nor will it be the last. What people have to understand is that