Tells the truth about black people and racial tension
This movie tells the truth about the black community, even in ways that Spike Lee did not intend to.
A lot of you are confused about looting the pizza shop, Sal, etc. But it will be all explained below.
Sal represents most normal people, they are friendly but they have some racist prejudices. We all do. Sal actually liked having his business in a black neighbourhood. He liked the clientele. Why would he keep someone as lazy and self-serving as Mookie around if he did not care?
His racism only came out when he was angry. For example, at Radio Raheem or Buggin' Out. But to other black people, he did not harbor some inner hatred. He genuinely liked being part of that community.
In this movie, we see that everyone is racist, like it or not. But what we see is that Black people are most racist, classist, and ageist towards themselves. The kids didn't like Mayor because he was old-fashioned. But the truth is that without people like Mayor, the kids would not have the freedoms they have today.
What we see is that the black community is very divided about age, sex, wealth, and ethnic origin. And we see that throughout the film. Sweet Dick Willie admits that black people are lazy, it is not the Koreans' fault for wanting to open a shop in a black neighborhood to make money.
People like Radio Raheem and Buggin' out were spoonfed misguided ideas about black nationalism and social justice. They represent the black people who scream "racist" in response to any sort of criticism.
Buggin' out has no problem displaying his "black pride" but he admonishes Sal for being proud of his Italian heritage. Even Jade tells Buggin' that he should be focusing on REAL issues to improve the community, and not unimportant ones like pictures of black people in someone's pizza shop.
This represents the misguided goals of the "social justice" activists in the black community, they are only focused on empowering themselves through representation and not building their community.
Radio Raheem represents the rudeness of such people, they act tough and expect everything to be handed their way because they are big, black, and listen to rap music. But people like Sal don't cave into such behaviour, because he is in a tough neighbourhood. The white people with their "white guilt" would never step in, save for that cyclist.
By the way the cyclist represents white people who are ignorant to their own privilege. They have the power to move into a neighbourhood and give it a "positive" image, something black people are not able to do. This is complex, and I'll save it for another discussion.
The build-up leads to the fight Sal has with Raheem and Buggin' out.
Sal's sons represent white people who appropriate "black" culture but have nothing to want to do with black people. This fight represents what happens to the black community when they are threatened by someone who is not black; they unite.
Even though they all hated each other earlier in the film, when they are being attacked, they suddenly come together for a cause. After Raheem is killed, we see that it leads to rioting. This is a pattern we see on the media. A black person is killed by the police (usually taken out of context) and black people riot and protest, claiming "racism."
It is a vicious cycle because non-blacks are scared of blacks due to fear of rioting, which leads to attitudes and tension in this film that eventually give way to more rioting and violence, which perpetuates the cycle of prejudice against black people.
We even see how violent and uncooperative the black people become. Remember that EVERYONE thought that Raheem was an antisocial jerk, yet when the white man came and killed their "brother," they felt reason to destroy everything. It shows how disorganized and impulsive the black community is.
The idea is, their hearts are in the right place but they are certainly NOT doing the right thing. The older people such as Mayor and Mother Sister don't have the impulse or energy to do such things. Mayor was the most sensible and wise character in this film, he has probably experienced the most racism in his life than any other character yet he is not bitter about it. He wants to resolve things peacefully.
The police are seen as an enemy to the black community and not a friend. Why? Because of instances such as Raheem. We see today, with Ferguson and Eric Garner, that this film still holds true. The black community doesn't want to "act" until one of their own is killed by the police. It is a never-ending pattern. They loot and destroy businesses that employed them, they bite the hand that feeds them.
Sal will never reopen his pizza shop, but he understands why everything happened the way it did. He is sorry about Raheem. That is why he is not angry at Mookie. By the way, Mookie is seen as an "uncle tom" for being employed by a white man, as opposed to mooching off others or selling drugs (a reality for poor black people in urban slums). He is caught in between supporting his "people" or a multi-racial society that requires cooperation.
In the ending quotes, it is clear that Spike Lee believes that the black community needs to tread the fine line between non-violence and self-defense. But the problem is, even the cops didn't necessarily hate black people. In the scene where the man gets his card soaked, the cops implied that it is better off to walk away than engage (anger) the community. It is a racist and condescending attitude towards black people, but at least the cops were realistic. So why the reaction when they killed Raheem?
Like I said earlier, most people are like Sal and not openly racist but it seems that only Black people today seem to openly act on people who are openly racist towards him. Attitudes today haven't changed, we have honorable movements such as "black lives matter" but at the same time there are members of this movement who would rather see all white people die. And they also justify rioting and looting as retribution, even to businesses that have nothing to do with the injustice.
With incidents such as Michael Brown, this movie is saying that the Black community (still) does not have the right approach to dealing with these things. Yet there is an "it can't be helped" mentality among people.