Dropping Isaiah, based mostly on the novel of the identical title, was launched thirty years in the past on March 17, 1995. The movie facilities Khaila (Halle Berry) who loses custody of her child Isaiah (Marc John Jefferies) whereas combating substance dependancy, and with out her information whereas arrested and in restoration he will get adopted by a white hospital social employee, Margaret (Jessica Lange). In an try and get her child again three years later, Khaila enlists the assistance of lawyer Kadar Lewis (Samuel L. Jackson) to take Isaiah’s adoptive dad and mom to courtroom and get the rights to her son again.
Regarding the matter of interracial adoption, there are elements of the movie that also resonate right this moment. There are additionally elements that don’t. When watching Dropping Isaiah by means of a 2025 lens, how does it maintain up?
I admire how effectively the film makes house for each ladies’s lives and never getting straight to the courtroom proceedings. We as viewers witness Khaila make valiant efforts in her restoration whereas additionally constructing a neighborhood round her and being a maternal determine to younger Black youth in her neighborhood and the white little one she nannies. We additionally witness Margaret make nice efforts in parenting Isaiah, particularly with regard to being conscious of his wants that also impression him as a result of medicine that Khaila used when pregnant and breastfeeding him.
I don’t admire how heavy the theme of “colorblindness” is the entire film’s spine. In a scene the place Isaiah is blowing bubbles along with his adoptive sister, Hannah (Daisy Eagan), she locations his hand in hers. She asks him, “What’s totally different about our arms?” Isaiah says, matter of reality, “My hand is smaller.” The concept that youngsters are merely colorblind till the world hits them with actuality is simply not true. Youngsters can undoubtedly level out pores and skin shade with out understanding the precise definitions of racial id.
There’s one other scene that’s presupposed to showcase Margaret’s facet of why she believes Isaiah ought to proceed to reside together with her that additionally leans into colorblindness. Although Kadar makes tremendous helpful factors about Isaiah needing to be surrounded by books with characters that appear like him, dolls with the identical pores and skin tone as him, and the need of understanding the place he comes from as a Black little one, Margaret cries, “What about love? You didn’t point out love this entire time.”
It’s clear how a lot Margaret loves Isaiah, however the film refuses to make clear how Khaila loves Isaiah, too, and the way multiple system has damage her possibilities in elevating him in his toddler years. The questions on ensuring Isaiah acknowledges his id as a Black little one are acts of affection. Nonetheless, as well as, love just isn’t sufficient to boost a baby. Particularly a baby who will obtain imply feedback about his id whatever the racial background of the particular person making these feedback.
Social staff and different professionals have careworn the significance of reunification and inserting youngsters with dad and mom of their similar racial background because the ’90s, however they’re particularly stressing it now due to how typically class standing tends to affect inserting youngsters in foster care or adoption. There may be even an amazing witness Kadar calls to the stand who talks about the way it’s horrible messaging to Black youngsters to say the one manner you’ll be secure is staying in an prosperous family. Watching that now in 2025, I acknowledge how that messaging may cause trauma to a transracial adoptee no matter how a lot or little “love” is within the family they develop up in. Mother and father say issues like, “We saved you” or “You ought to be grateful.”
It’s already dangerous sufficient how typically Margaret and Charles paint Khaila as a villain, utilizing derogatory phrases like “junkie” and “inmate”; it exhibits how hypocritical white social staff like Margaret might be. The movie sides with them in a manner that doesn’t sit effectively with me. On the climax of the movie, Isaiah is positioned along with his delivery mom. Isaiah has an excessive amount of problem adjusting, and I discover this unrealistic. It’s good to painting him grieving his adoptive mom, nevertheless it’s not good to painting him as staying with Khaila because the “darker” selection by the movie’s lighting and unhappy music to make the viewer really feel extra sympathy for Margaret shedding a baby than for Khaila doing her finest to take care of persistence since she is aware of she’s making up for misplaced time.
Ultimately, after Isaiah has an outburst in school, Khaila calls Margaret for assist in calming him down, however she makes it clear that Isaiah will nonetheless reside together with her and nonetheless attend the predominantly Black preschool he’s been attending since residing together with her. I really like how the film refuses to offer in to the anticipated ending of the well-meaning white girl all about “love” getting to maintain Isaiah. It’s candy seeing these two ladies of distinct tales and backgrounds work collectively on the similar objective for Isaiah. But it surely nonetheless portrays Margaret as “the hero” in a manner that I hate. The visibly unrequited affection from Isaiah to Khaila, once more, just isn’t reasonable to me.
Essentially the most reasonable character in Dropping Isaiah is Kadar. He makes it very clear that he’ll struggle for Khaila to get her parental rights again however not with out warning her about how the courtroom will put her below excessive examination for her historical past, her residing scenario, and something that would perpetuate the stereotypes of low earnings Black ladies in restoration. Her hair and garments shift considerably within the second half of the movie as a result of he’s made her conscious of that scrutiny. Margaret even cries to her husband, Charles (David Strathairn), after their first day in courtroom, “She was lovely.”
Some nice alternate options to this movie about interracial adoption and the complexities of reunification within the foster care course of embody the comedy Pleasure Experience, that focuses on transracial adoption for Asian of us with regard to upbringing and lacking senses of tradition, and the play A Case for the Existence of God that focuses on totally different lived experiences of fathers, together with a single Black homosexual foster father having to navigate the potential reunification of his foster daughter and her aunt.
Dropping Isaiah might be watched by means of Amazon Prime that’s mixed with a Paramount+ subscription. It’s value watching to see Halle Berry and Jessica Lange act their butts off, a younger Marc John Jefferies being completely valuable, and the illustration of Black attorneys and social staff who’re nice at what they do. It’s not value watching Cuba Gooding, Jr. play somebody pressuring Khaila right into a romantic relationship throughout this hectic level in her life, a nasty style of “colorblindness is the important thing to like and tolerance,” well-meaning white ladies because the hero (even after the film’s piss-poor try in critiquing that earlier within the movie), or listening to derogatory language for previously incarcerated folks and folks in restoration from drug use.
