I think you missed the point of the KKK scene, which was ridiculing the KKK. Similar to the scene in "Django Unchained" or something like that. Simply showing people wearing hoods isn't racist within itself, especially if you're making fun of them. In fact, ridiculing them and stripping away their mystique is what brought down the KKK from a national power to an unorganized bunch of rednecks. Read on Stetson Kennedy and Superman vs the KKK. Showing the Klan as a bumbling bunch of idiots who can't even light a cross is a fitting show of their stupidity. If they had glorified the Klan instead of ridiculing them then I would find it racist.
I thought Cleavon's performance was a little over the top, but I think that was just to set up the "twist". Though I'm not sure how big of a twist it was supposed to be, as Calculus broke character several times and showed he might be more than he seemed, and Fletch commented on that in the narration. To be honest, it's really no worse than a lot of the stuff in Blazing Saddles ("Oh, lo'dy, lo'd, he's desp'it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy!" and where Cleavon himself dons the old sheet/hood disguise), but just like in Blazing Saddles, Cleavon's character is a smart black man playing the dumb black guy stereotype to keep dumb white people off guard.
If anything, it's racist against white people. Though I take no offense as it's all in good fun. In the end it turns out Calculus was really an intelligent FBI agent who was playing off Southern stereotypes as a cover, but what's the excuse for all the white people? The people fawning over Jimmy Lee and his "miracles", the guy who molested a dead horse, the coon hunt where some of the guys couldn't be "left alone with the dogs", the guy with the unhealthy relationship with his dead mother, the stereotypical redneck cops, etc? It paints the entire South, mainly the white people, in an unfavorable light. As somebody who has spent my entire life in the South (minus a 5 year stint in Iowa for schooling) I can tell you most of it's over-the-top stereotypes. But I don't take offense, and some of them have some basis in truth so I can laugh at them. It's a comedy movie after all. It's all just meant to give Fletch a good fish-out-of-water backdrop, which works nicely at times, not so well at other times.
"Got a cigarette Nels?"
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