Shine light on racism that festers in shadows

When Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations thugs wanted to spew their racist venom at a rally in Riverfront Park in 1983, Spokane’s black mayor, Jim Chase, said let them.

But ignore them.

When Aryans wanted to invite their Ku Klux Klan pals to Coeur d’Alene for a bigotry parade down Sherman Avenue in 1998, human rights activists conceded the hatemongers’ free-speech rights.

But they stole the spotlight and reshaped the message of the day by staging a concurrent festival of unity. By collecting pledges for every minute the racists marched, moreover, they raised a reported $28,000 for human rights causes.

Throughout the uncomfortable era during which Butler and his obedient bigots tried to make Kootenai County a national center for white supremacy, local political leaders, law enforcement officials and civic activists responded by appealing to the community’s deeper values.

So resoundingly did the community answer that in 1987 Coeur d’Alene received the first Raoul Wallenberg Community Award for Human Rights, presented in New York City in honor of the Swedish humanitarian credited with saving thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.

Butler is dead now, and his Hayden Lake compound lost to bankruptcy and converted to a peace park. The good guys prevailed, but to roll the credits now on a happy ending would be naive.

Racists have resprouted in the region like noxious weeds, prompting regional officials to convene and contemplate their strategy. At a press conference Friday, they declared that the community can overcome the bigots’ boldness because, in Spokane police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick’s words, “we are more bold than they are.”

A rash of littering incidents involving racist fliers have been reported in Coeur d’Alene, Spirit Lake and Spokane Valley. A handful of new faces have surfaced and declared their intent to revive Butler’s demons. The scourge has not been eradicated yet, but moral leaders in the area know that the strongest weapon in their arsenal is the region’s collective decency and indignation.

It is vital for the community to respond again as it has in the past, not just to ward off the latest visible assault, but also to overwhelm the latent bigotry that always lurks in a few corrupt hearts. Stifling their views is not the way to beat them; demonstrating their neighbors’ unconquerable disapproval is.

As a former Spokane city manager, the late Terry Novak, said of Jim Chase’s courage in 1983, “He innately perceived that sunlight kills germs.”