What Sidney Poitier taught us

When Betty White died last week, I felt a tug at my heart, a sense of sadness that this sweet and universallyloved woman had left the stage. It was a combination of gratitude for a life well lived, and regret that she hadn’t made it to the century mark, a milestone that few of us reach and even fewer deserve. And then, I moved on.

I had a similar reaction to the deaths of John Madden, Joan Didion and to a much lesser extent, Harry Reid. These were consequential deaths, and needed to be recognized, but they didn’t have an impact on me at a personal, granular level. The sadness that I felt, even for Betty, did not translate into physical aches and actual tears.

And then my sister texted to tell me that Sidney Poitier had passed away, and I started crying. The timing was unfortunate, because I was sitting in a waiting room at immigration court, moments before my case would be called. I was supposed to be focusing my last ounce of attention on the file in front of me, but all I could do was conjure up the black and white image of a beloved movie, “A Patch of Blue”. That was the film that made me fall in love with Poitier, a movie that carried as powerful a message about anti-racism as “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” without its political posturing and preachiness.

Poitier was the first Black man to win an Academy Award, for his performance as an itinerant handyman in “Lillies of the Field.” The scene where he teaches a group of Catholic nuns to sing the Negro spiritual “Amen” is both humorous, and deeply moving. And that movie is, itself, a simple prayer that different races, different genders and different faiths cannot just coexist, they can glorify the God that created them.

And then there was “To Sir With Love”, the movie that showed the power that respect, empathy, good manners and a sense of self-worth can have on those who were born with no privilege, and end up saddled with the low expectations of generational poverty. The titular song, sung by Lulu, is an ode to the teachers who care — often to their own detriment — for children who will grow up, and go away. Perhaps the public school teachers in Chicago, and all the others who refuse to go back into their classrooms, should watch it.

And we can’t forget “In The Heat of the Night,” a movie that always reminds me of my father when I see it because it tells the story of a Philadelphian who encounters blooddeep racism in the 1960s south.

The messages in his movies were like a thread woven through my own life, as I grew to understand the evils of racism, the importance of humility, the searing scars of domestic abuse, the crack in the country, north to south, the power of the English language, spoken properly and with respect for its innate poetry, the beauty of loud and boisterous praise, and the fragility of human relationships. In every one of his movies, Sidney Poitier presented us with possibilities of greatness, not on battlefields or in laboratories or even on the stage, but within ourselves. He showed us what we could be like, if we weren’t saddled with bigotry, impatience, intolerance and probably the worst thing of all: apathy. In every one of his roles, he broke down barriers, and taught us how to act as if we really couldn’t see the hue and color of our neighbors’ skin, but simply grasped the underlying character.

That dignity earned him some criticism from people who thought he should have been less a gentleman and more a rabble rouser like Malcolm X in the service of equality. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, he addressed the issue of always having to be defined by race: “I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life. There are those who allow their lives to be defined only by race. I correct anyone who comes at me only in terms of race.”

And that’s why we loved him, because he put humanity above identity.

His life, lived like the most perfect prayer, should end like his greatest film: With an Amen.