The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

     I recall my dad telling me about a movie called Imitation of Life. It was about a struggling young actress with a six-year-old daughter sets up housekeeping with a homeless black widow and her light-skinned eight-year-old daughter who rejects her mother by trying to pass for white. It starts Lana Turner, John Gavin, and Sandra Dee. I believe it was set in the 50’s when times were very hard for blacks. The daughter continues to deny her mother through her adulthood. She experienced prejudice when her boyfriend who was white realizes that she’s black and wants nothing more to do with her.  When she gets news that her mother is very ill and is near death, she returns home ,only it was too late. She is obviously devastated over the death; she drapes her body over her mom’s coffin as it lies on a horse drawn carriage in the street .Crying she is calling out to her mom, apologizing. Only it was too late.

     I believe when the young struggling actress and her daughter befriend the homeless black widow and her daughter, true equity was diminished. They did not discriminate because of the homeless widow and her daughter’s race or any other aspect of their identity. After watching this movie, I felt sorry for the daughter, especially after she rejects her mom so many times. And when she finally decides to accept her , not only is it too late, but sadly, her mother cannot tell her  how proud she is of her because she has finally come around to accepting who she is and where she came from. On her mother’s death bed, she accepted the fact that she was black, because that was her mother. She was living a privilege life, passing as the norm. She wanted opportunities that as a black child she would not have been able to get at that time, during the 1950’s.