Mike Seate, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
- In a scene from Spike Lee’s brilliant 1989 film “Do The Right Thing,” a group of underemployed black residents of a Brooklyn neighborhood gather to shoot the breeze most afternoons.
In one poignantly funny bit, one man laments the arrival of “these damn Ko-rean grocers” who he feels are merely exploiting local blacks for financial gain. Another character, played by the late comedian Robin Harris, reminds the crew that the Korean grocers worked hard and endured lots of problems to bring groceries to an inner-city black community, and did so while local residents failed to provide stores of their own.
That scene played through my mind again and again when I heard about a protest staged by several black Hazelwood residents over the weekend. The locals were incensed by comments made by Michael Dimperio, owner of Dimperio’s Market, suggesting that shoplifting was partly to blame for his decision to close the store after 80 years in business.
