Losing Isaiah, based on the novel of the same name, was released thirty years ago on March 17, 1995. The film centers Khaila (Halle Berry) who loses custody of her baby Isaiah (Marc John Jefferies) while struggling with substance addiction, and without her knowledge while arrested and in recovery he gets adopted by a white hospital social worker, Margaret (Jessica Lange). In an attempt to get her baby back three years later, Khaila enlists the help of lawyer Kadar Lewis (Samuel L. Jackson) to take Isaiah’s adoptive parents to court and get the rights to her son back.
In regards to the topic of interracial adoption, there are aspects of the film that still resonate today. There are also aspects that don’t. When watching Losing Isaiah through a 2025 lens, how does it hold up?
I appreciate how well the movie makes space for both women’s lives and not getting straight to the court proceedings. We as viewers witness Khaila make valiant efforts in her recovery while also building a community around her and being a maternal figure to young Black youth in her neighborhood and the white child she nannies. We also witness Margaret make great efforts in parenting Isaiah, especially in regards to being aware of his needs that still impact him due to the drugs that Khaila used when pregnant and breastfeeding him.
I don’t appreciate how heavy the theme of “colorblindness” is the whole movie’s backbone. In a scene where Isaiah is blowing bubbles with his adoptive sister, Hannah (Daisy Eagan), she places his hand in hers. She asks him, “What is different about our hands?” Isaiah says, matter of fact, “My hand is smaller.” The idea that children are simply colorblind until the world hits them with reality is just not true. Children can definitely point out skin color without knowing the exact definitions of racial identity.
There’s another scene that’s supposed to showcase Margaret’s side of why she believes Isaiah should continue to live with her that also leans into colorblindness. Even though Kadar makes super useful points about Isaiah needing to be surrounded by books with characters that look like him, dolls with the same skin tone as him, and the necessity of knowing where he comes from as a Black child, Margaret cries, “What about love? You didn’t mention love this whole time.”
It is clear how much Margaret loves Isaiah, but the movie refuses to clarify how Khaila loves Isaiah, too, and how more than one system has hurt her chances in raising him in his infant years. The questions about making sure Isaiah recognizes his identity as a Black child are acts of love. However, in addition, love is not enough to raise a child. Especially a child who will receive mean comments about his identity regardless of the racial background of the person making these comments.
Social workers and other professionals have stressed the importance of reunification and placing children with parents of their same racial background since the ’90s, but they’re especially stressing it now because of how often class status tends to influence placing children in foster care or adoption. There is even a great witness Kadar calls to the stand who talks about how it’s terrible messaging to Black children to say the only way you’ll be safe is staying in an affluent household. Watching that now in 2025, I recognize how that messaging can cause trauma to a transracial adoptee regardless of how much or little “love” is in the household they grow up in. Parents say things like, “We saved you” or “You should be grateful.”
It’s already bad enough how often Margaret and Charles paint Khaila as a villain, using derogatory terms like “junkie” and “inmate”; it shows how hypocritical white social workers like Margaret can be. The film sides with them in a way that doesn’t sit well with me. At the climax of the film, Isaiah is placed with his birth mother. Isaiah has too much difficulty adjusting, and I find this unrealistic. It’s good to portray him grieving his adoptive mother, but it’s not good to portray him as staying with Khaila as the “darker” choice by the film’s lighting and sad music to make the viewer feel more sympathy for Margaret losing a child than for Khaila doing her best to maintain patience since she knows she’s making up for lost time.
In the end, after Isaiah has an outburst at school, Khaila calls Margaret for help in calming him down, but she makes it clear that Isaiah will still live with her and still attend the predominantly Black preschool he’s been attending since living with her. I love how the movie refuses to give in to the expected ending of the well-meaning white woman all about “love” getting to keep Isaiah. It is sweet seeing these two women of distinct stories and backgrounds work together at the same goal for Isaiah. But it still portrays Margaret as “the hero” in a way that I hate. The visibly unrequited affection from Isaiah to Khaila, again, is not realistic to me.
The most realistic character in Losing Isaiah is Kadar. He makes it very clear that he will fight for Khaila to get her parental rights back but not without warning her about how the courtroom will put her under extreme examination for her history, her living situation, and anything that could perpetuate the stereotypes of low income Black women in recovery. Her hair and clothes shift significantly in the second half of the film because he’s made her aware of that scrutiny. Margaret even cries to her husband, Charles (David Strathairn), after their first day in court, “She was beautiful.”
Some great alternatives to this film about interracial adoption and the complexities of reunification in the foster care process include the comedy Joy Ride, that focuses on transracial adoption for Asian folks in regards to upbringing and missing senses of culture, and the play A Case for the Existence of God that focuses on different lived experiences of fathers, including a single Black gay foster father having to navigate the potential reunification of his foster daughter and her aunt.
Losing Isaiah can be watched through Amazon Prime that’s combined with a Paramount+ subscription. It’s worth watching to see Halle Berry and Jessica Lange act their butts off, a young Marc John Jefferies being absolutely precious, and the representation of Black lawyers and social workers who are great at what they do. It’s not worth watching Cuba Gooding, Jr. play someone pressuring Khaila into a romantic relationship during this stressful point in her life, a bad taste of “colorblindness is the key to love and tolerance,” well-meaning white women as the hero (even after the movie’s piss-poor attempt in critiquing that earlier in the film), or hearing derogatory language for formerly incarcerated people and people in recovery from drug use.
