"Look beyond black and white and you'll find the color of friendship" (The Color of Friendship).

     In the year 2000, Disney Channel first aired the movie The Color of Friendship. This movie is one that should be viewed by people of all ages and I commend Disney for creating a movie that was so genuine and one that covered issues still relevant today.

     The Color of Friendship is set in 1977 tells the story of the Dellums family and their experience opening their homes to a white South African excange student. Mahree Bok hails from an apartheid South Africa and tries to persudade her parents to let her go to America as part of a foreign exchange program. In South Africa, Mahree witnesses how cruel the white South Africans were to the black South Africans. It is apparent that Mahree isn't comfortable watching the abuse but that is all she has ever known. In America, Piper Dellums tries to persuade her parents to house a student from South Africa. Her parents finally agree and Piper is extremely excited because she has always dreamed of having a sister.

     But things aren't always as they seem. While the Dellums assume that South African meant black South African, Mahree assumes that US congressman meant that the Dellums would be white.

     Both the Dellums family and Mahree learn a lesson about acceptance in this coming-of-age film. Mahree also sees how people of different races get along as one in America. The Color of Friendship is based on the short story Simunye by Piper Dellums. 

     This movie is a must for understanding the stuggles between race and color. Flora, the Bok family maid, tells the story of the weaver-bird, a bird with many different styles of plumage and its communal nest building. They all work together and no one bird is treated differently because of the colors of their feathers. This is a metaphor for the racial harmony that Flora hopes will exist in the world. After Mahree's visit to America, she is more aware of the racial discrimination existing in South Africa. One of the movie's final scenes shows Mahree upon arriving back home. She runs to Flora, hugs her, and shows her the freedom flag sewn inside her jacket. This shows that she sides with the black liberation movement. In the book written by the real life Piper Dellums, she speculates that Mahree (named Carrie in the story) was murdered and beaten to death for her anti-racist views.

     Ron Dellums stated, "I have a friend, a new friend, from South Africa. And this friend recently told me about a unique bird found in her country. And what is remarkable about this bird is not that it nests, for all birds nest, but that this particular bird nests in a community all unrelated to each other and all of different colors. This community of different colors and different birds has one common goal: to care for each other. We are a world of people, not ethnic groups, not races, and not different descriptions of people on paper. We are human beings. And if there is one thing that human beings have in common, it is the desperate need to be free" (The Color of Friendship).