I’m guessing Spike Lee wasn’t quite the red-faced, raging, racist nut job they, in their fit of racism, presumed he must be.
I should clarify: Spike Lee has been very opinionated, very liberal, and sees things through racial lenses, and I know of no issue where he has adopted a more conservative viewpoint. But, at least in his early days he was intelligent, and he was an artist, not a propagandist.