The Debate Over ‘Jungle Fever’ : PRO-LEE

T imes staff writer Itabari Njeri’s commentary on Spike Lee’s film “Jungle Fever” (“Doing the Wrong Thing,” June 23) has prompted an outpouring from readers, with responses supporting Lee outnumbering those supporting Njeri about 2 to 1. A sampling:

Defending Lee on Racism

Itabari Njeri calls Spike Lee an “infantile black nationalist” and a racist. That’s like calling a Jew who hates Nazis a bigot.

Lee is not anti-white or anti-Italian. Otherwise, how could he write, cast and direct such sensitive portrayals as those in “Jungle Fever” by John Turturro and Annabella Sciorra? Lee is anti-bigotry. Despite Njeri’s academic disregard for the term race as a “pseudo-scientific category,” racism was invented not by Lee but by white people.

Njeri is stuck on a point, but it has little to do with the great American movie “Jungle Fever.” The black-white relationship is just a plot device as the movie hurls us into an urban America revealing the negative and positive elements of black, white, Italian, male and female.

She lectures Lee that “there is one race, Homo sapiens .” I wonder if she’d give that speech to the politicians who sell out civil rights, health care, education and women’s right to choose--all for the price of a bigoted white vote.

Njeri makes me think of Pogo’s classic comment: “We have met the enemy, and (s)he is us.”

RICK EDELSTEIN

Los Angeles