When is a Kung Fu movie not just a Kung Fu movie? When it inspires hope for racial tolerance.

A Kung Fu movie called “Birth of the Dragon,” released over the summer, dramatizes an infamous 1964 fight between martial arts legend, Bruce Lee, and a little known Northern Shaolin Kung Fu Master, Wong Jackman.

It would be just another Kung Fu movie if it didn’t happen to debut the same weekend that several alt-right, white supremacist groups attempted to take over San Francisco.

This movie could be enjoyed as just another kick-ass summer blockbuster. It could receive some decent ratings and you might watch it in a few months via an online rental site. But, as someone who is familiar with the true story that this movie is based on, I cannot see this as just another Kung Fu movie. In our current national and state context, this movie rises above the toxic rhetoric in our cities, streets and sometimes our homes.

If you’re familiar with any version of the real face-off, you’ve likely heard that Wong Jackman challenged Bruce Lee to a fight in order to keep him from teaching Kung Fu to whites. As a senior student of Wong Jackman, and a Caucasian, I can attest that this story is absolutely false.

This movie attempted to reeducate and overcome - albeit with a little Hollywood flare - this decades old myth that, in some circles, still perpetuates racial tensions.

In the film, Bruce Lee does assume that Wong Jackman is in San Francisco to stop him from teaching whites. But Wong Jackman admits he is here to pay a penance for nearly killing a man in an exhibition fight back in China. Wong Jackman even takes on a disaffected white student of Lee’s.

This is where the record is set straight on the racial issue. But the cross-cultural sharing and teaching of a singularly Chinese art is the real lesson of the film and the real reason that Wong Jackman came to San Francisco from China.

Kung Fu in the 20th century was becoming a dying art. You could hire a bodyguard with a gun and have better protection than from a martial artist. And, as railroads spread throughout China, the need for caravan escorts also disappeared. These two legal martial artist jobs of bodyguards and caravan protectors vanished almost overnight.

There is no way that Kung Fu would have continued as an art if it were kept to China and the Chinese. The idea that maintaining “purity” as a means of means of maintaining a tradition or culture, as some hate groups use as an excuse for their existence, is exactly wrong. The Chinese knew this and so did Wong Jackman.

He championed Kung Fu freely and openly, teaching the traditional Northern Shaolin style. From the first day, Wong taught both men, and women, and people of all races and ethnicities. Teaching martial arts, and spreading traditional martial arts outside of China, and Hong Kong, was why Wong Jackman came to the United States.

And, while San Francisco did have a huge Chinese population, it was not exactly an easy place to move to with the goal of spreading a cultural art.

Native Americans, Japanese and Chinese have all been institutionally persecuted throughout our state’s history. And, while California boasts incredible diversity, hate still breeds within its borders. Today, California ranks No. 1 in the nation for hate groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

My students and I are grateful that Wong Jackman came and shared these arts so openly for 40 years. But I will be more grateful when we all learn that our traditions and cultures cannot survive unless we include and invite people of all races and backgrounds to experience and enjoy them.

California has come a long way. But we have a lot further to go as a state and a nation. To see an old racial fable set right gives me hope.

Sifu Scott Jensen is a resident of San Rafael and teaches Northern Shoalin Kung Fu from his school 10,000 Victories to students young and old throughout the Bay Area. He studied under Wong Jackman for 25 years, as well as other famous Grandmasters of traditional Chinese Martial Arts in the United States, China and Taiwan.

Read more about the film and interview with Sifu Jensen by clicking here.