A few weeks ago I received a telephone call from an unfamiliar area code that was identified as coming from the Los Angeles area.

Since I don’t know anyone living in Los Angeles who would be calling me, I let the call go to voicemail, to be returned or ignored after listening to it later.

Here is the verbatim message from that call:

“We have to robocall you at home because we all know that the media will not carry our message: Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, white countries for everybody.

“Everybody says there is this race problem. Everybody says that this race problem will be solved when the Third World pours into every white country, and only into white countries.

“Everybody says the final solution to this race problem is for every white country – and only white countries – to assimilate, i.e., intermarry with all those nonwhites.

“They say they are anti-racist. What they really are is anti-white.

“What they want is white genocide. Genocide is a crime. …”

The call was recorded using a youthful feminine voice, and ended with information about the person placing the call, a political candidate seeking both financial support and supporters for his cause. I choose not to further identify him at the risk of further promoting his hate message.

I am writing about this phone call/message to make several points:

• For people who think we are living in a “post-racial” society, think again. This hate message found me, as I innocently went about the activities of my daily life.

• For people who think African Americans seek out opportunities to “play the race card,” understand that we don’t have to go looking for anything. Being singled out in negative ways because of our race is a daily fact of life.

• For people who think yourself blameless because you’re not a racist, think again. You can do something every day to combat the kind of racist thinking that victimizes innocent people. When you accept other people’s use of racist language, racist ideology and racist stereotypes without protest you help strengthen those attitudes in society.

The same week I received that telephone call I was channel-surfing on TV and came across a documentary that was a stark contrast to the phone call’s message.

The program was “White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America.”

Promotional information about the 66-minute film describes its content and purpose:

“White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the U.S. through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we’ve entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. For years, Tim Wise’s bestselling books and spellbinding lectures have challenged some of our most basic assumptions about race in America. White Like Me is the first film to bring the full range of his work to the screen – to show how white privilege continues to shape individual attitudes, electoral politics, and government policy in ways too many white people never stop to think about.”

Every school, every church, every social organization that hopes to play a role in ending racism in America would do well to order a copy of this video and screen it as often and as widely as their purpose will allow. The Media Education Foundation makes it available through its website at http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=421.

Often people say they don’t know what to do about racism in our society. Watching this program and gaining insight into why racism is so deeply entrenched and so difficult to combat is a good place to start.

Lena Mitchell is a retired daily reporter for the Daily Journal and writes a Sunday column each month. Contact her at lena.mitchell@journalinc.com.