Do The Right Thing

In his 1989 movie, "Do The Right Thing," Spike Lee portrayed Italian-Americans and African-Americans as two ethnic groups with minimal understanding of one another and a good deal of barely submerged hostility toward one another. This depiction was fairly accurate and, at least to some extent, can be explained by the fact that ethnic groups in America are substantially shaped by their historical experiences in the country (269).

The historical experiences of these two groups, despite some similarities, are substantially different and it is these differences that explain a great deal of their misunderstanding and antipathy to one another. The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and the differences between Italian-Americans and African-Americans, discussing how each has shaped the two subcultures of Americana and influenced their relationship with one another.

Comparison of Italian-Americans to African-Americans

A key difference between Italian-Americans and African-Americans involves their history of coming to America. For Italian-Americans, immigration to the United States was entirely volitional. Moreover, for many of them, America was viewed as a land which would lift them high above the poverty and low social status they had experienced in Europe -and indeed, although they experienced cultural disruption, this dream was realized for most with one to two generations (Gold 8).

On the other hand, African-Americans had no love or h

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ng the sociopolitical orientation of the country. On the other hand, one long held-difference between Italian-Americans and African-Americans, namely the role of the family, is now being looked at anew. Italian-Americans have strong attachment bonds and a good deal of cultural value and mores associated with the place and role of the family in their lives (Nelli 42). However, sociologists have traditionally held that the socio-historical experiences of black families had led to both marital and familial instability, to the disruption of husband-wife and kin networks, to matrifocality, and to a lack of authoritative fathers (Gutman 5). Eshleman reports that research has now begun to challenge the assumption that slavery and other socio-historical experiences of African-Americans led to family and marital disruptions (161). More current studies are indicating that most (70-90 percent) of African-Americans have had a husband or father present along with two or more other members of a nuclear family unit. Also, the matrifocal pattern has only been infrequently observed, and an extensive and strong kinship network has been repeatedly found in research (Gutman 5). Thus, despite their sociological differences, the bond with f

Category: Film - D