Ugly Offspring Hatched From This Imperfect Union

Well, nobody said it would be easy.

As it turned out, finding a way to form a more perfect union remains as vexing today as it was 200 years ago when the Founding Fathers strung together some all-nighters and tried to pound out a constitution for the new country.

In a year in which we’ve thrown parades to congratulate ourselves for repelling the enemy without, we stagger and fall when faced with the enemy within. Surely, it’s never been truer than today that we have met the enemy and he is us.

We’ve nearly been lulled to sleep by 10 years of bedtime stories from Daddy Reagan and Uncle George, who’ve done their best to comfort us and tell us things are fine.

Then along comes filmmaker Spike Lee to make us sit bolt upright. Lee delivers more fundamental truths about society in his two-hour movies than our political leadership does in an entire campaign season. No wonder ol’ Spike isn’t president.

What Lee knows is that racial and ethnic problems and the festering sores they cause still plague the country. And he also knows that unless people talk about them (please go see “Jungle Fever” and rent “Do the Right Thing,” Mr. President), the problems won’t go away.

There’s never a shortage of case studies, and two recent race-related incidents in our own back yard help illustrate the point. What’s troubling is not so much the extremism of them but, rather, how the racial response of the people involved surfaced so quickly in the wake of what should have been fairly benign situations.

Case No. 1 involved a 28-year-old white man driving in Mission Viejo. He said in a published interview that he got miffed when a black youth danced in the street in front of his car. Still angry, the man said, he chased the kid and then, after the youth called him a name, he replied by calling the boy a name and asking his white friends why they were hanging around with him.

Case No. 2 involved the former Orange County head of the Jewish Defense League who set up a phony “hot line” on his business phone because he kept getting calls meant for a Spanish-language television station. The hot line message, recorded in Spanish, advised people to turn in “wetbacks,” the derogatory term for illegal immigrants and offered so-called “bonus points” for additional information.

The man said he did it because he was mad at the station for not changing its phone number.

One man gets mad at a 12-year-old and lashes out in racial epithets. Another man gets mad because of a spate of wrong numbers, and the best revenge he can think of involves a cynically derisive game aimed at Latinos.

These two cases have another similarity that says more about society than we may want to hear. In the first case, friends and business associates described the man (who was arrested as a result of the incident) as having been respectful and friendly toward blacks.

In the second case, the man had worked for minority rights and, being Jewish, certainly could appreciate, one would think, the sensitivity of encouraging people to supply the names and addresses of people to authorities.

Yet, in their respective moments of anger and frustration, both men took the low road of race-baiting.

Perhaps you think this is much ado about nothing. In neither case, you’re saying, did anyone coldly and calculatedly set out to do bodily harm. These were just heat-of-the-moment reactions, you argue.

So stipulated. I’ll grant you that for the most part, modern society is repelled by the image of a bunch of bigots hopping in the truck and cruising for minorities to beat up.

And surely, that represents progress on the part of the species. But new, mutated life forms of bigotry evolve, sometimes not as easy to recognize but still toxic.

They’re the kind that lurk beneath our daily exterior of tolerance and understanding, surfacing at critical flash points when our guard is down.

They’re the kind of feelings that Spike Lee makes movies about. “It’s amazing--this preoccupation with color,” the protagonist in “Jungle Fever” says.

They’re also the kind of feelings that the nation’s political leaders aren’t too interested in talking about.

But they represent the kind of potential tensions that need to be soothed if we’re to get about the business of forming that more perfect union.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.