How The Blind Side Blinds Us: Postracism and the American Dream

Abstract

This article analyzes how The Blind Side enables acceptance of economic disparities that are organized along racial lines. The film features the value of compassion and reproduces the central component of the American Dream: Opportunity for success is equally available to everyone. But the film maintains a myth of white superiority and obscures systemic barriers that hinder some more than others. The film's postracial message is enhanced by its narrative structure: It is a variant of the “anti-racist-white-hero” genre that features a rhetoric of tokenism.