The important thing to remember here is that the Carter family (Johnston in real life) were white people of mixed racial ancestry and entitled to call themselves "white." Change the tainted partial Negro ancestry to American Indian, and who would dare to say that they were unworthy of their European ancestry and the racial description "white"? The film is not the anti-passing "you're not good enough to be white" screed exemplified by "Pinky" and "Imitation of Life." "Lost Boundaries" is different in these ways: 1) The family members and their extended kin are all mixed-race whites; there is no black "mammy" figure as in "Pinky" and "Imitation of Life," where the heroine is presented as a genetic freak with no white kin.
2) The film shows some respect for the fact that many mixed whites victimized by white racial purity laws rejected that nonsense and did not self-police themselves humbling accepting the false "Negro" label.
3) The film is honest enough to show that even those who had humbly accepted the insulting "Negro" label (which is similar to Jews accepting the "non-Aryan" label during the Third Reich) were very uneasy about it and often did things that showed their true white orientation. That is why the "Carter" parents not only live as whites in an all-white New Hampshire town, but don't inform their children of the "taint" in their ancestry. After the great revelation, Scott Carter even tells his son that there is no reason for him and his sister to not continue living as white. After all, they ARE white.
4) The Carter family is so white in both looks and culture, it makes the parents look incredibly stupid for ever submitting to the "Negro" label in the past.
2) The film shows some respect for the fact that many mixed whites victimized by white racial purity laws rejected that nonsense and did not self-police themselves humbling accepting the false "Negro" label.
3) The film is honest enough to show that even those who had humbly accepted the insulting "Negro" label (which is similar to Jews accepting the "non-Aryan" label during the Third Reich) were very uneasy about it and often did things that showed their true white orientation. That is why the "Carter" parents not only live as whites in an all-white New Hampshire town, but don't inform their children of the "taint" in their ancestry. After the great revelation, Scott Carter even tells his son that there is no reason for him and his sister to not continue living as white. After all, they ARE white.
4) The Carter family is so white in both looks and culture, it makes the parents look incredibly stupid for ever submitting to the "Negro" label in the past.