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~I'm trying to develop a list of films which have an interracial couple as
~main characters but the issue of their interracial relationship is not the
~main focus of the film.  BODYGUARD as an example: The interracial aspect of
~Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner's characters are never discussed.  Can
~anyone offer some more?
 
I find this discussion and debate interesting.  Part of the problem is in
defining a silly concept like race on scientific terms.  Are we to think
that the significant thing about a 4'6" Kalahari Bushman and a 7'2" Masai
warrior is the color of their skin?
 
    But as a historical/sociological concept, it is interesting.  Racial
mixture has been around on this continent to a significant degree since the
Spanish mated with the tribespeople of the new world and formed Mexicans,
Guatemalans, etc.  It was present in the first slave societies developed
here.
 
    With regard to movies, probably one should go back and look at "Island
in the Sun," with Harry Belafonte kissing Joan Fontaine (1957) and the way
that Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and some of the border states banned the
playing of the film.  There was not much point to the movie, it seems now,
but it was a major landmark in the unwritten code.
 
                        Gerald Forshey
                        Professor, Humanities and Philosophy
                        Richard J. Daley College
                        City Colleges of Chicago
 
"Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination,
in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason,  and in the
gold sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the
touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures
and disenchantments of the world of fact."   --Bertrand Russell