One Potato, Two Potato (1964)

I loved this heartwrenching film about a custody battle between an inter-racial family and a white father. The movie's low budget and the somewhat (sometimes very) awkward scenes work to its advantage - it views as an essay on the topic of racism and social expectations. It really illustrates how so much of morality is a result of complex implicit social agreements, and how when such agreements are unjust, that morality should be reformed, even if the immediate results for all those involved are bad, we need to strive for something better. Often in terms of injustice, for things to get better, they need to get worse first. By daring to challenge the injustice of prejudice against interracial marriage, these characters suffered the greatest personal lost in the battle for custody of their child, but in the big picture, they are taking a step that together with others will change the world.

The only part of the film that I would like to see improved, but that makes sense with the narrative of the time, is the idea that African American men were being denied their masculinity and that that was a bad thing. I have been reading bell hooks, and I am completely convinced that sexism is as bad as racism and that it exists in both whites and African Americans. However, as a redeeming quality, Frank, the male character in this movie, does not act on these ideals of masculinity, they read more as something he was conditioned to believe rather than something he is (although I can see how some viewers could interpret it differently).