By Charlie Denison, contributing writer
Interracial relationships aren’t uncommon, but it’s been a long, hard-fought journey to get where we are today. Despite the Pew Research Center’s statistic that one in six newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, it’s still a struggle for these couples (and their children) to feel accepted. It’s been legal to marry someone of a different race for over 50 years (thanks to Loving v. Virginia, which I feature below), but there are still those who object.
How can we condemn someone for who they choose to love? And how do the persecuted persevere? It takes courage. It takes strength. It takes a love that’s shatterproof. As Monsignor Ryan observes in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”:
“I’ve known a good many cases of marriages between races in my time. Strangely enough, they usually work out quite well. I don’t know why. Maybe because it requires some special quality of effort—more consideration and compassion—than most marriages seems to generate these days.”
Perhaps Monsignor Ryan is right. He’d be proud of most of the couples featured in this blog. As for the last two films featured, well, their protagonists weren’t so lucky.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
No list of films on interracial relationships is complete without Stanley Kramer’s 1967 classic, “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” featuring a young, winsome Sidney Poitier (three years after winning a best actor Oscar for “Lilies of the Field”) as John Prentice, a 37-year-old physician and professor who falls madly in love with 23-year-old Joanna, a beautiful, naive daughter of a Bay area newspaper publisher. The two just met in Hawaii but know they want to spend the rest of their lives together and plan to wed right away. When John goes to meet Joanna’s parents, however, tension ensues.
“[John] thinks you’re going to faint because he’s a Negro,” Joanna tells her mother, Christina (an astounding Katharine Hepburn). The humor of the situation is always present and most of it holds up surprisingly well. There are many delightful moments in the film, many of which center around the empathy and compassion involved in making such a difficult decision. When it comes down to it, however, the film is not about race, but about love. No one says it better than Joanna’s father (a brilliant Spencer Tracy): “The only thing that matters is what they feel and how much they feel for each other.” Then, looking to his wife, Christina, he adds, “And, if it’s half of what we felt… that’s everything.”
Interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states when “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was filmed. Six months before its release, and two days after Spencer Tracy’s death, the U.S. Supreme Court shut down anti-miscegenation laws in their revolutionary response to “Loving v. Virginia.”
Guess Who (2005)
Whereas “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” was regarded an instant classic, “Guess Who” was regarded as “mildly entertaining” at best. Plugged In called it “uneven but warm-hearted” and Empire called it “merely another step on Ashton Kutcher’s recent path to big-screen blandness.”
I wish I could argue with those reviews, but I’m afraid that they’re pretty accurate. Kutcher (at his peak) stars as Simon Green, the unlikely white guy with excellent credit who shell-shocks his soon-to-be father-in-law Percy Jones (Bernie Mac doing his thing). Mac carries the film. His reactions to Kutcher are priceless and only sometimes exaggerated. It’s worth seeing (or rewatching for the first time in 15 years) just to see his hilarious discomfort. Zoe Saldana does a nice job as Theresa Jones, although you hardly get to know her character. This movie is about Percy and Simon more than it is about Simon and Theresa.
Although it hasn’t exactly aged well, “Guess Who” does have a nice message about the importance of communicating with your significant other. It also stresses the importance of being honest and knowing when to admit you’re wrong. Like Percy says, “Pride ain’t nothin’ when it comes to matters of the heart.”
Loving (2016)
This ambitious film by Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud”) humanizes the story of Richard Loving, a bricklayer from rural Virginia, who helped lay the foundation for the acceptance of interracial marriage with the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in America.
When Richard (a superb and transcendent Joel Edgerton) falls in love with Mildred (a quiet, strong, determined Ruth Negga) in 1957, they think little of the repercussions. They’re young and into each other. We’ve all been there.
Imagine that love taking you away from your family. Imagine the courts trying to ruin your life for it.
“I guess you got to thinking’ it was fine,” a police officer tells Richard. “You might think people around here don’t care… it’s God’s law. He made a sparrow a sparrow and a robin a robin. They are different for a reason.”
Fortunately, Richard and Mildred didn’t give up, nor did their lawyers. They may have lost the battle in Caroline County, Virginia, but they won the big war, and “Loving” captures this 10-year journey of bravery in Oscar-worthy fashion. The Lovings didn’t want this attention and they didn’t want this hardship, but they didn’t want others to go through it, either. They didn’t want anyone else to be told who they could or could not love based solely on the color of their skin, and—thanks to their perseverance—we live in a better world. Want some hope right now? Check this movie out.
A United Kingdom (2017)
Black British female director Amma Asante (“Belle”) tells the remarkable true story of soon-to-be King of Bechuanaland Seretse Khama (another Oscar-worthy David Oyelowo performance) and Ruth Williams (an adorable Rosamund Pike), who met at a jazz club in London in 1947. Their love was undeniable from the start.
The honeymoon period doesn’t last long, though, as their love is rejected by their families and by their respective nations.
Despite Seretse’s uncle’s rejection and despite South Africa’s insistence that they divorce, the couple carried on, making a statement for love while also rejecting apartheid.
“Are we to now uphold the abomination that is apartheid… the very same abomination that has been oppressing us for decades,” Seretse says while addressing his people upon his return to Bechuanaland (now known as Botswana), a poor and struggling nation in Africa. “We should be fighting for equality… not on the wife I have chosen… whose only apparent crime is to fall in love with me… and mine to fall in love with her.”
Their road is long and full of suffering, but, as Seretse so eloquently puts it, they do not allow the ugliness of the world to take their joy away from them.
Like “Loving,” “A United Kingdom” is a brilliant and beautiful illustration of how love can conquer even the most formidable obstacles. Based on the book “The Colour Bar” by A. Susan Williams, Asante’s adaptation (written for the screen by Guy Hibbert) is a heartwarming, courageous tale that is perhaps more prescient than ever. The great Nelson Mandela called Seretse and Ruth’s legacy “a shining beacon of light and inspiration,” and you can clearly see why when you watch the film.
And those couples not so fortunate…
Jungle Fever (1991)
This Spike Lee joint has it all. You know you’re in for a treat when the credits roll to Stevie Wonder (he did the whole soundtrack). As he gets you in the groove, he sings the story of Flipper (Wesley Snipes) and Angela (Annabella Sciorra):
She can’t love me, I can’t love her
‘cause they say we’re the wrong color
Staring, gloating, laughing, looking,
like we’ve done something wrong
because we show love strong
Get real, come on
Unlike the other movies listed, Flipper was married to someone else. Happily married, he says, right before kissing Angela, the new temp at his architecture firm (take a good look at his boss). He didn’t know what to think of her at first—but after having some Chinese together in the office, his curiosity gets to him, and he believes it gets to her, too.
Did she have jungle fever? Or was she just genuinely attracted to this articulate architect?
Flipper always assumes it’s because he’s black. After all, he just wanted to know what it was like to hook up with a white chick. He makes this clear.
This is no surprise to his wife, Drew (Lonette McKee), who says he’s always had a complex about color. “Cause you’re so black you have a problem,” she says.
Spike, who also wrote the film, does a great of empathizing with the Black female characters, especially during the “women’s war council,” where Drew and her best friends have it out about how stubborn their men can be and how white women are always going after their men. And it’s getting harder and harder for them to trust their men won’t give in.
“We are losing our men,” one woman says. “That’s the bottom line.”
“They’re all dogs,” says another. “Every last one.”
Flipper and Angela’s affair leads nowhere good. As an Italian still living at home, Angela is thrown out. And Flipper’s father (the Good Reverend Doctor Purify, played by Ossie Davis) chastises the two of them for their poor choices. Flipper’s life is falling apart. Is it even worth it? Is he in love, or did he just have to know what he was missing?
Join Flipper’s journey and enjoy the surprises along the way. I’ll leave them for you to discover, but I will let those of you unfamiliar with the film know that Samuel L. Jackson is phenomenal as Flipper’s crackhead older brother, and I’ll give you a hint about a character to take a good look at: Gator’s crackhead girlfriend.
Get Out (2017)
Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) seem like a cute modern couple. They’ve been together six months and things are starting to get serious. Time for Chris to meet the parents. Has she told them he’s black?
No. She wants it to be a surprise.
This realized, groundbreaking psychological thriller by Jordan Peele is a twisted take on “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” with shocking and disturbing secrets.
What is Rose hiding?
What is up with her parents?
And is she actually as crazy as they are?
It’s hard for any relationship to work—interracial or not—if someone isn’t being honest. But this is about more than relationship drama; it also serves as a haunting reminder that white supremacy hasn’t gone anywhere. When Peele wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay, much of our nation’s racism was simmering underneath the surface, but it has become frighteningly apparent.
Charlie Denison is a freelance writer, musician, award-winning journalist, and 11-year DVD Netflix member who lives with his wife in Lewistown, Montana.
He's been featured in “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” “Montana Quarterly Magazine,” and other publications. Follow him on Twitter @charliebigsky.