‘The brother from another planet,’ Kamala Harris and the fallacy of post-racialism

by CANDICE FREDERICK

Forty years after the cult classic gave us a Black character from outer space who crash-lands in Harlem, it finds new relevance in today’s discussions on race.

Every few years or so, the term “post-racial” boomerangs back into the zeitgeist, bringing with it the myth of a supposed utopia where racial woes no longer need to be brought up — much less rectified.

Just last month, Salon published a piece suggesting that a statement from presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ nomination acceptance speech, “We have so much more in common than what separates us,” implies that she, too, believes that racial labels only further divide us.

That was published less than a decade after The Atlantic ran a clear-eyed article condemning the fallacy of post-racialism that should have put the kibosh on the whole idea and any remnants of it thereafter.

But this rhetoric can be traced as far back as 1984 (and probably earlier) when The New York Times published an oversimplified “Black folks have much less to complain about now” type of piece because we had presumably overcome most significant hurdles by then. It cited as evidence Rev. Jesse Jackson’s relatively successful presidential campaign, Michael Jackson’s record eight Grammy Awards for “Thriller,” and the debut of “The Cosby Show.” Eddie Murphy had also proven himself as a megastar in “Beverly Hills Cop,” And “Breakin’,” which helped solidify the hip-hop cinematic canon, opened No. 1 at the box office.

But that same year, the low-budget film “The Brother from Another Planet” also opened in theaters, dropping audiences — and its mute, Black male-presenting protagonist from outer space — into Harlem, and offering a far less idyllic view of the “capital of Black America.”

The film barely made an impact at the box office, save for devotees of its writer-director and indie film auteur John Sayles. In its oddball, occasionally funny and eternally poignant way, it reflected the realities of race relations, immigration, police injustice, poverty and the drug epidemic that existed throughout that so-called Black “renaissance.”

“The film didn’t really pick up in terms of popularity until it got on television,” the film’s star, Joe Morton, told me when we hopped on a Zoom call together weeks before the movie’s 40th anniversary on Sept. 7.

But there was a hunger among some Black moviegoers for stories that reflected their real worlds beyond what was seen in popular blaxploitation films at the time. Morton cites Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” released two years after “Brother,” as another example of a growing fervor for small films about Black experiences that fell outside the typical Hollywood fare.

“I think audiences ran to them because they were going to be good stories,” Morton said. “Both Spike and John are social commentators. So, I think people were very excited because it was going to be about something, even though we were sci-fi — something real.”

That’s partly why the actor, to this day, calls “Brother” his “favorite film,” telling his X followers just two years ago that it’s “because of the challenges the character presented and the story of unrecognized Black talent that it tells, and it was my first lead in a film.”

Morton is known to a newer generation of fans for roles like Whitley’s fiancé on “A Different World,” Silas Stone in “Justice League” or Papa Pope on “Scandal,” but it is the title character in “The Brother From Another Planet,” now considered Sayles’ cult classic, that established him as an unparalleled screen actor.

Soon after his spaceship crash-lands at, fittingly, the Ellis Island immigration center, Morton’s alien alter ego, an enslaved person on his own planet, trudges through the streets of Harlem in tattered clothes, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. He doesn’t speak and doesn’t understand anything happening around him, but gathers some important truths right away.

Chiefly, while race isn’t particularly a concept the alien recognizes on his planet, he quickly understands that his appearance as a Black man garners specific reactions on Earth.

“He knows the dynamic because, remember, at the beginning of the film, he watches a Black man being arrested,” Morton said, “and he makes the false conclusion of that — Oh my God, that’s what they do here.”

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