Like Atomic, I'm sorry, I haven't seen the film, so if that precludes me from being involved, fine, but since nobody who HAS seen it has jumped in yet--

Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Spike Lee has remarked that he himself has only ever been asked by white viewers whether Mookie did the right thing; black viewers do not ask the question.[17] Lee believes the key point is that Mookie was angry at the death of Radio Raheem, and that viewers who question the riot's justification are implicitly valuing white property over the life of a black man.[15]
That, to me, seems to be a non sequitur. If it came down to a choice between the pizzeria and the life of a person (black or otherwise), very few would question choosing the man's life. But in this case, the trashing of the pizzeria would not prevent nor make up for Raheem's death -- the loss of the pizzeria was simply more loss. To say that questioning the riot's justification is racist is a bit much, but then, I doubt Lee was calling MLK a racist, so that might have been a claim he made in an exaggerated or philosophically imprecise manner.