When Racism Lurks Beneath a Mask of Normalcy

I would like to think I could recognize them on the streets . . . wild-eyed, disheveled, muttering incoherently about the evils inflicted on this country by blacks, Jews, homosexuals.

Then I could assign them to the lunatic fringe, imagine them locked in their private orbits, outside of what we consider normalcy. That, were it true, would comfort me.

But I read the news and hear their stories and realize they are frighteningly indistinguishable from you and me.

Men like Matt and Tyler Williams. Quiet, personable, former honor students. The brothers have emerged as suspects in the slayings of a gay couple and are suspected of playing a role in the arson attacks on three Sacramento-area synagogues. Authorities said the brothers had a collection of assault weapons and hate literature.

Or Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, who sent racist letters to his college newspaper but lived peacefully alongside his black neighbors . . . until his Fourth of July weekend shooting spree targeting Jews, Asians and blacks left two people dead and nine more wounded.

“He never let on . . . ,” said a black man who lived next door to Smith in their Illinois apartment complex. “There was no intensity in his eyes, no threat in his character.”

No signal pointing to the hatred in his heart. That, I realize, is what rattles me, as I read the tidy, type-written letter that arrived in the mail, addressed to me:

“We Americans can’t do anything without a bunch of niggers whining about it. We can’t even go to a movie and have a laugh without some screwball nigger writing a column about it. Think about how much better this country and the world would be without niggers.”

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The letter was in response to my Fourth of July column, dealing with the ways our personal histories influence how we see the world and dictate our reaction to something as innocuous as a line in a movie, and as momentous as the celebration of our nation’s birthday.

I’d braced myself for angry letters; you cannot write about something as emotional as race in this country without invoking a hailstorm of response.

And I was not disappointed. More than 300 of you wrote letters or e-mailed. Many took me to task for seeing racism in the most innocent of things; others applauded my honesty. For the most part, even those who passionately disagreed demonstrated thoughtfulness and civility.

Only a handful were the kind of hate-laced missives that cross every reporter’s desk from time to time . . . the kind that, even after 20 years in this business, continue to unsettle me. Some are clearly the ravings of madmen . . . scrawled on pages torn from the Bible, full of ramblings about prophecies and premonitions.

Then are the others, perfectly composed and signed with proud declarations--like “I dare you to print this”--that remind me that the nation’s racists are not all holed up in grungy hovels, too preoccupied with their “Prepare for RACE WAR!” pamphlets to understand what they read and see.

I realize that, like you and me, they are reading our newspaper . . . checking stock prices, box scores, Dear Abby. Then heading off to the movies, to the office, to drop their children off at school.

And it feels like a betrayal, an assault on my senses.

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But pain shared is pain soothed. And I read on and find comfort in words like these:

“Your article made me cry. It pointed out that despite all the best intentions, African Americans and European Americans can see the same things and interpret them very differently.”

The e-mail message came from a white woman, whose roots in this country go back to the early 1700s. Her ancestors were abolitionists and, later, civil rights leaders in her Northern California hometown. Now she is trying to raise her children to honor what she believes: to respect every culture, to look at character not color.

But her history cannot insulate her white children from the injustice they perceive. “They are becoming angry,” she wrote, “because they are assumed to be racist.

“My son was accused of being racist for not lending a pencil [to a black classmate]. He didn’t lend it because he had only one and needed it himself.”

“How can we cure this evil if we are consistently misinterpreting each other? How can we come to a place where we can simply be friends without making assumptions? How will we become a family of Americans if we can’t talk to one another?”

And how, I wonder, can we acknowledge the evil in our midst, yet still find a way to trust one another?

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Sandy Banks can be reached by e-mail at sandy.banks@latimes.com.