iamkeren’s review published on Letterboxd:
Can other ethnicities born/raised in Africa claim being African?
I throughly enjoyed this movie, but I also always love a romance movie with a good forbidden love trope. This one was definitely done differently then others and it was done in such a good way because we get the background of why Jay has such animosity towards black people not saying that it was right but we can see his point of view.
This movie definitely opened up the conversation of, Can other ethnicities born/raised in Africa claim being African? I think this can't necessarily have a set answer for everybody because everyone will have their own opinions on this. In my opinion it is a case to case basis in this case presented in this movie Jay and his family although they were Indian they were definitely African also. His great grandfather was brought down there forcefully by the British to build railroads and then just stayed in Africa because that's just what ended up happening. Africa is all Jay and his family knew although they were Indians they never been there and were barely even excepted by Indians who were actually from there and immersed into the culture.
This reminds me a bit of slavery because mass amounts of African people were forced into new countries for slave labor and even when slaves were free the majority didn't go back to Africa because the United States was all they knew. Them being from Africa doesn't take away from them being African hence being called African American because they are both African and American no matter where they're originally from.
Also, going back to the word ethnicity, I had to google what it actually meant and it said "Your ethnicity refers to your background heritage, culture, religion, ancestry or sometimes the country where you were born." Meaning that Jay and his family really could claim being Africans although they don't look like the conventional African.
This movie was a very nice movie to watch it really made me think about this topic of can other ethnicities claim being African even though they do not look like the typical African. I genuinely loved each of the characters in this movie was so funny and had Denzel Washington in it which is always a plus. They acting was amazing everything was great about this movie I would definitely watch this again at one point.