The idea behind "Shades of Guilt" is pretty good. Unfortunately, it's handled in a very obvious and ham-fisted manner...and looses much of its point as a result.
A white guy sees a black man in distress and instead of stopping to help, he leaves him to a gang of racists who intent on doing him harm. As karma would have it, soon the white guy magically becomes black and finds out what it's like.
There are two problems with the show. First, after the white guy became black, the reactions of the people around him were way over the top. I am NOT denying racism...it does exist. But instead of handling this with subtlety, it's too much and too obvious. It could have been handled better. The other problem is that while many react poorly to him due to racism, a lot of this negative reaction is because of how foolishly and over the top the man behaves...which serves to obsure the message. All in all, about as subtle as a stripper doing her act at a church BBQ...and it had a good point to make but did it rather poorly.
By the way, for a TV episode with a better use of the idea of a white man turning black in order to find out how that feels, see the old "Mission: Impossible" episode "Kitara"....which manages to make the point in a much better way.
A white guy sees a black man in distress and instead of stopping to help, he leaves him to a gang of racists who intent on doing him harm. As karma would have it, soon the white guy magically becomes black and finds out what it's like.
There are two problems with the show. First, after the white guy became black, the reactions of the people around him were way over the top. I am NOT denying racism...it does exist. But instead of handling this with subtlety, it's too much and too obvious. It could have been handled better. The other problem is that while many react poorly to him due to racism, a lot of this negative reaction is because of how foolishly and over the top the man behaves...which serves to obsure the message. All in all, about as subtle as a stripper doing her act at a church BBQ...and it had a good point to make but did it rather poorly.
By the way, for a TV episode with a better use of the idea of a white man turning black in order to find out how that feels, see the old "Mission: Impossible" episode "Kitara"....which manages to make the point in a much better way.