Racial Division Exposed In Jungle Fever By Spike Lee

In relationships, especially in interracial ones, it's one thing to experiment or to get a quick-fix, but it's quite a different story when dealing with actual marriage. Marriage is a sanctity that should not be messed around with, given its status as being one of the only cultural universal social institutions around. However, humans are born as curious creatures, which helps them evolve by breaking out from the constraints of the media and of society. When racial division is involved, the issue of curiosity is illuminated. In Spike Lee's 1991 movie, Jungle Fever, there are many characters who explain this curiosity phenomenon through their actions, and there's one in particular who is practically the epitome of racial division. Though he

This was just how society was, and this is what was believed to be acceptable. In the movie, Jungle Fever, he reveals to his son and Angie that "you think I don't understand about the white woman committing black adultery, but I do. There was a lot of lynchings in Willacoochee, Georgia where I come from when I was a boy. White man say to his woman: 'Baby, you are the flower of white Southern womanhood, too holy and pure to be touched by any man, including me. I'm gonna put you up on a pedestal so the whole world will fall down and worship you. And if any nigger so much as look at you, I'll lynch his ass.'" He feels angry that black men weren't allowed to even look at a white woman, yet any white man could just go and have sex with black women, all while tainting the racial purity, and not be punished for it. On the other side, he's also ashamed that even his son "who ought to know better got a loving wife and daughter still got to fish in the white man's cesspool". It's one thing to be curious about relations with the opposite race, and quite another to follow through and take action. This is where the Good Reverend draws the line. Disgusted, he ends the dinner by refusing to eat with a "whoremonger" and dismisses himself from the dinner

Is it better to try to branch out and engage with people of different cultures like Flipper did, or is it better to try to stay pure and stay on one side of the fence like his dad did? This is a question posed by Claudine O'Hearn in her book titled Half and Half. Contradicting enough, we're supposed to do what we can to fit in with other Americans, but at the same time, we're supposed to keep our historical culture and heritage which does not fit in with Americans. Sure, The Good Reverend Doctor Purify was justified with his bigotry, but when should the transition from the past (segregation) to the future (integration) happen? Eventually, America must unite if it ever wants to rid itself of its problems and people must eventually realize that "racial and cultural identity becomes an inherent sum of who you are and what your experiences have been", and isn't necessarily based solely on race. People will have their reasons for being bigots, but we must show empathy for their beliefs and understand their reasons in order to show them that not all people within certain ethnic groups are the