The Poitier Effect: Racial Melodrama and Fantasies of Reconciliation

Against the fraught background of the civil rights struggle, Sidney Poitier emerged as an image of dignity, discipline, and moral authority. In his characters’ restrained responses to ignorance and injustice, Poitier represented racial reconciliation and reciprocal respect. Sharon Willis shows this Poitier effect to be a function of white wishful thinking about race relations as she traces it from the civil rights era to our own.