Trick Baby

The racial dynamics in Trick Baby drive the plot of the movie. Due to Folks' ability to pass as white, each plan is executed and ultimately is successful. When they are running a con, Blue plays the poor Negro man who is easily exploited by white men while Folks play a white man preying on the unassuming Negro. For this reason, Blue states that "his white skin gives us a slick edge". He is trusted by the white men they are trying to con because he looks like one of them, all the while, identifying as black. While his look allows him to gain access to white spaces, it causes him to be ostracized within the black community. It is during interactions with Black people that he is derogatorily referred to as a "trick baby". His light skin and white blood does not allow him to be recognized as Black by other Black people.

This movie flips the normal formulation of Blaxploitation films and utilizes Folks' seeming whiteness subversively in order to take from white people. Through the manipulation of whiteness, Blue and Folks take what they want. They use the power that comes with white skin to their benefit. Blaxploitation films, however, usually feature power derived from Black people and Black culture. The mark of the genre thus, are Black characters and aesthetics. This is a reflection of a Black Power consciousness manifesting through film. Black Power leader, Stokely Carmichael, makes it clear that whiteness does not have a place in the movement. In "What We Want" Carmichael indicts the Civil Rights Movement "whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites," [1] and ignored angry communities of black people. He critiques the Civil Rights Movement for a continued allegiance to white standards and institutions. Black Power instead centers Blackness and therefore the films derived from this consciousness are divorced from whiteness and white characters as well.

The move to an authentic Black politics through the Black Power Movement manifests itself in film. In his book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Donald Bogle states that the Black Power Movement shaped the aesthetic of the films the 70's. The character that becomes popular in films is black and appeals to black audiences because he takes the system on head-first. He is in control of all aspects of his life, sexually, politically, and economically. He is power, and he has no time for whiteness. His aesthetic and the aesthetic of the films "played on a certain social/political philosophy prevalent in some sectors of the black community in the late 1960s and early 1970s"[2] during which time there was a rejection of anyone who "aided and abetted White America through attempts at cultural assimilation.".[2] The consciousness of the movement and the art forms influenced by it pushed whiteness to the periphery. However, this film uses Folks' white skin against white people.

Women are largely absent in this film. The two women present in this film have minor roles which hinge upon their relationship with the men in the film. This reflects the absence of women and supporting roles to which they were relegated within the Black Power Movement. Blue's wife, Cleo Howard, is a peripheral character. The focus of the film is Blue's relationship to Folk's and the con. Early on, it is made clear that Cleo is a non-essential factor to the con and as a result, she is largely unimportant to Blue. Her relationship with Blue does not at all compare to the partnership Folks and Blue have. Blue states that "[Folks] was living here long before you came. But that don't matter, you're still the star boarder". Referring to her as a boarder was supposedly a joke, however the way in which he treats her in the movie proves that this is her true position. She is merely a boarder, she has no claims or ownership to the property or the money and thus she has no say in its distribution and allocation. Thus, she is to be silent when those issues are concerned. She is only relevant insofar as she provides the only service that Blue does not require from Folks, sex.

Cleo's role reflects the silence, absence, and peripheral roles of women in the Black Power Movement. In her article "Framing the Panther: Assata Shakur and Black Female Agency," Joy James states that "one can easily imagine antiracist revolutionary struggle against the state without (black) women clearly in the picture, but to imagine revolution against state violence in the absence of (black) men often draws a blank".[3] In the fight against racism, women also had to fight against patriarchy. While many women joined Black Power movements and made many significant contributions, they are largely unheard of, save a few famous women. In "Black Women and Black Power," Darlene Hine claims "the cult of black manhood worked against them".[4] She theorizes that in reaction to the suppression of masculinity during Jim Crow, there was a strong emphasis on masculinity in the Black Power Movement. Additionally, women were confined to traditional notions of femininity. By these notions, it was emphasized that women's roles was to support the movement from the periphery. All the labor needed to run the movement behind the scenes were done by women. They were responsible for "implementing the medical, housing, clothing, free breakfast, and education programs".[5] But yet, these contributions do not circulate in the discourse of Black Power. Even popular Black female icons such as Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis were recognized in conjunction to their lovers or revolutionary male counterparts. Thus, patriarchal logics were a hindrance to women in the movement. James states "men appear independent of women in revolutionary struggles; women generally appear as revolutionaries only in association with men, often as 'helpmates'. As a category, the female revolutionary remains somewhat of an afterthought, an aberration; hence she is an abstraction- vague and not clearly in the picture".[3] Thus, Cleo Howard's abstracted role in the film serves as a parallel to women in the Black Power Movement: in the picture insofar of their relationships to great men, but abstracted and forgotten in their own right.