Weekend Watch: Spike Lee gets real about racism

“Everyone's a Little Bit Racist” goes a jaunty tune from the 2004 Broadway hit “Avenue Q.” It's funny because it's true.

Humans are by nature tribal. We tend to mistrust and stereotype outsiders. Acknowledging this can relieve tension and lead to honest, productive conversation.

Spike Lee has spent his career sparking such conversations, nowhere more effectively than in his 1989 film “Do the Right Thing.” Depicting the simmering racial tension of one hot summer day in Brooklyn, Lee's film at first seems to side mainly with its black characters.

As it progresses, however, Lee makes sure we also see the complicated humanity of their white antagonists. They, like everyone else in the film, are just trying to get by and live their lives. They have more important things to worry about than race.

One scene in particular captures Lee's “we're-all-in-this-together” approach: different characters – the black protagonist (played by Lee himself), a Korean grocer, a white cop, a Puerto Rican neighbor – address the camera with rapid-fire racial slurs. The creativity and fluency with which each character denigrates another race makes it funny; the genuine anger behind it makes it uncomfortable.

When the tension finally explodes in violence and destruction (which can't help but remind us of the summer of 2020, if not our current campus unrest), “Do the Right Thing” again chooses to unsettle. Nobody has proven a point; nobody has “won.” The characters, like the audience, are left to ponder the seemingly insurmountable human impulse to scapegoat and turn strangers into enemies.