“This is the Eighties! It’s the Cosby decade — America loves black people!” exclaims Mark Watson (C. Thomas Howell) in the 1986 comedy “Soul Man.”
The film opened 30 years ago to mixed reviews and some highly publicized controversy.
Centered on a white Harvard Law School student who poses as a young black man in order to qualify for a scholarship, “Soul Man” ruffled feathers within the black community. The NAACP publicly denounced the movie as “racist,” and some screenings were picketed.
But Rae Dawn Chong, who played Howell’s love interest in the film, told TheWrap that the uproar was much ado about nothing.