In August 1990, Spike Lee penned a defensive op-ed in The New York Times titled “I Am Not an Anti-Semite,” responding to accusations that his film Mo’ Better Blues peddled antisemitic stereotypes through its portrayal of two Jewish club owners, Moe and Josh Flatbush, as greedy exploiters of Black jazz musicians. Lee insisted he was no bigot, just an artist crafting “honest portraits”. He decried a “double standard” in Hollywood, where Black stereotypes abound without uproar, yet his brief depiction of Jews drew fire. He invoked whataboutism, comparing 10 minutes of screen time to 100 years of racist cinema, and accused detractors of hypocrisy for ignoring D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation—a film that glorified the KKK and incited lynchings—while scrutinizing him under a microscope. Ironically, Griffith and Leni Riefenstahl made similar pleas: Griffith denied racism, claiming Birth of a Nation........

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