Skin: Shedding Ugly Truths

I liked this film, but I did not think it was perfect. The main actors – Neill, Krige, Okonedo and Kgoroge – performed their roles well. Sophie Okonedo was not completely believable as the teen-aged Sandra Laing, but that’s a small quibble given Okonedo's gargantuan talent.

The scenes that disturbed me most showed Sandra enduring humiliating racial tests, bleaching and seriously burning her skin with a dangerous homemade concoction of chemicals, and coming to terms with her parents’ deep denial of their own racism. 

What really saddened me is that so many people are more concerned with debunking the notion that two white-looking people can (biologically) produce a black-looking child, than with South Africa's brutal, hateful apartheid regime that tore this family apart, and turned a beautiful young girl’s life into a living hell. 

Unfortunately, the “one-drop rule” and the notion of white racial purity (tying to white superiority) remain rampant today, even in the good old US of A. We will likely solve world hunger and cure every disease imaginable before we eradicate that one!