Film Comment: Watermelon Man

     In Watermelon Man (1970), a comedy directed by controversial director Melvin van Peebles [Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song (1971)], an obnoxious white man (Godfrey Cambridge in white makeup not up to 2009 standards) wakes up black and his entire world collapses around him.  He thinks it's a medical condition but he finds out that he's just black.  Everyone starts to treat him differently, even his progressive liberal wife (Estelle Parsons) who finds out that she's not so open minded after all.  He becomes increasingly alienated and hostile.  

     It amazes me that people, black and white, won't let it go, but, in America, race really is still the 800 pound gorilla that won't leave us alone.  Some people are so conditioned to think race first that they assume that any criticism of a black person by a white person must be because of a racist motive.  Others are convinced that persons descended from slaveholding ancestors ought to walk around in a heavy cloud of guilt.

     I am convinced that the solution does not lie in education, patriotism, nationalism, mind control, forced political correctness, shaming, or emerging from a cocoon as a "pod person."  The solution lies in the like-mindedness which comes from having the same nature, the Mind of Christ.

     Racism and other divisive attitudes are incompatible with a declaration of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  If we are His we should be like him.

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:" Philippians 2:5

"Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Acts 10: 34-35.

"For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." Romans 10:12

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28.