The alternate reality in this movie isn't alternate enough.

..............SPOILERS...If I ran across this movie, with out reading about it, I would be excused for thinking this movie was about a poor white guy and his family from Appalachia or the rural south who live in a mostly black rust belt city like Gary,Indiana or North Chicago Illinois. His black employer, who doesn't like white people, perhaps because of his own experience with discrimination, fires him. He kidnaps his boss and is shot by the police who are mostly; not surprising in a mostly black city. Even the fact the main character's son's interest in a black super hero action figure isn't that unusual. During the eighties didn't many children, white, black, yellow or red, want a Mr. T action figure. So where is the alternate reality...............The problem with this movie is that it doesn't attempt to depict the look of America if African culture was predominant. Their would be differences in clothing, architecture, furniture and countless other things. The inside of the home of Harry Belafonte's character doesn't look that different from any upper class white home. There is some black painted classical statuary, but it's still European art. Wouldn't there be some classical African art? In this realty many blacks decorate their homes with Afrocentric art...............More important is the rather tired worker vs bad boss plot. If this movie was about a black family it would have been attacked as an example of the culture of victimisation. The story would have worked better if it had depicted an alternate white civil rights movement, characters taking their struggle to the streets and fought for equal rights; not just a ordinary looser of a character who dies at the end.................Also even an alternate realities need an alternate history. Did the blacks have a civil war over the rights of states to allow white slavery, were there Jim Pigeon and one drop laws imposed on whites and was there the aforementioned white civil rights movement? They should have given audience much more to think about.
True genius is a beautiful thing, but ignorance is ugly to the bone.