One of Ohio's top-ranking legislators used an anti-Semitic slur in a joke several months ago. He apologized for it.

Ohio Senate President Doug White used the phrase "we need to Jew them down" while at a Cleveland fund-raiser in November. He explained recently that he meant it as a harmless phrase to describe bargaining, a hold-over from his Adams County upbringing. He realizes now that it was insensitive.

Some Jewish leaders have publicly accepted his apology. Last week he was sworn in as state senate president.

Here in the Tristate, someone papered a neighborhood in Union Township with fliers containing white supremacist and anti-Jewish statements.

"Let's Stop Being Human Shields for Israel" one flier read. It listed a group called the National Alliance. Similar "literature" has appeared in other Tristate communities, bemoaning the use of Aryan lives to defend Israel.

No one took responsibility for the fliers. There were no apologies.

But I put both events together in my mental database.

Signs of ignorance

Though the first was a slip of the tongue, a show of ignorance that one could argue was relatively minor, the second was more pernicious.

Both are signs that ignorance shouldn't be ignored. We must shine light on the entire continuum of bigotry, from the offhand comment to under-the-sheet activism, to defeat it.

Because you never really know who or what's out there. For every politician who inadvertently lets his racially challenged attitudes show, there are uncounted other "leaders" who agitate in secret in our society.

No one knows for sure if the National Alliance was involved with the fliers. The group maintains a Web site that claims it is one of the largest pro-white organizations in the nation. It boasts members in dozens of countries, although it names only a handful of members.

Among its stated goals is an "all-white living space" with a government and economy serving Aryan interests.

"We favor a free, strong, proud and white America," boasts the late William Pierce on a taped phone message at the Cleveland headquarters.

Mr. Pierce died in July. I could not get any human being to answer the phone.

Anti-Jewish attitudes

Are groups like the National Alliance really just a few quacks with a phone and Internet access? The Anti-Defamation League doesn't think so.

It says such groups are engendering a nationwide increase in anti-Semitic attitudes. The Anti-Defamation League in June released a survey showing a reversal in a decline of anti-Semitism, proving "an undercurrent of Jewish hatred persists in America."

The number of Americans with hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs had dropped from 20% in 1992 to 12% in 1998, but now it's back up to 17 percent, based on the league's poll of 1,000 Americans questioned April 26 through May 6. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Anti-Semitic attitudes were more prevalent among 35 percent of African-Americans and Hispanics, the poll says.

But among college students polled, anti-Semitic attitudes showed up in 3 percent.

History speaks loud and clear. Ignorance, though a powerful tool in the hands of racists, loses potency in the face of knowledge, education, exposure.

Martin Luther King Jr. got it right. Don't let racism roll under society's radar. Put it in plain sight and stand up to it.

Some ready to do that may want to visit the congregations of Isaac M. Wise Temple, Temple Sholom and Union Baptist Church, which Friday will honor Dr. King at 8:15 p.m. at Wise Temple, 8329 Ridge Road.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.