To my sons: be a man as Poitier is!


The death of Olivia de Havilland made me very sad. For many years I had tracked the passing of various “Golden Age” movie stars. I myself don’t remember this period, but their fame and films haunted the last decades of the 20th century. These were the artistic ‘classics’ of my youth, and the human witness of that period decayed and dying in their turn, one by one.

Of the very oldest there seems to me to be three prominent women and one prominent man now that remain aliive. Of the former, Eva Marie Saint, June Lockhart, and Angela Lansberry (I date Betty White’s real fame to a much later phase in her career). And then, there is Sidney Poitier.

Poitier has always held a special place in my heart. As a small child, I remember watching his films such as To Sir, With Love, and Lillies of the Field, with great interest. Poitier was a striking figure, a black man with very dark skin who modeled a sort of dignified and earnest Western manliness. Unlike black actors such as Harry Belafonte, Poitier’s visage exhibited no glimmer of Europe. His very appearance was unapologetically black with no compromises. But his mien, his bearing, was universal and admirable, reaching out across the chasm of external difference, bringing home the common virtues which bind us.

The 21st century

In this way, he exemplified a particular conservative and traditional attitude toward race and culture which I have always been personally sympathetic to. Integration into the fabric of society as a man on his own terms, rather than separation as a people apart.

That was always my goal. Whether I succeeded or not is a different matter, though that might be due to my own eccentricities rather than the broader culture.

I am the father of two young sons. Men who will grow up in this century, nurtured by its cultures, tempered by its traumas. I worry about them. And yet sometimes I think of someone like Poitier, who experienced a level of racism simply due to his physical appearance that we couldn’t even imagine, and yet who became something of a role model and figure of admiration, even to brown children of immigrants new to this country.

Let your bearing be reverent when you are at leisure, be respectfully attentive in managing affairs, and be loyal towards others. Though you be among barbarians, these may never be cast aside.