Yes, his skin color is important, for reasons already mentioned by other posters.
First, in the book, the character is black. The film is based on the book, therefore it demands a black character. Note that there are plenty of other races in the story - Mexicans/Hispanics, Whites, maybe even some Natives. But the story is about a particular man, who as a black person, carries within himself the marks of social stigma against blacks. This is shown, as others have pointed out, in the confrontation with the Ralph Nelson racist "boss", and perhaps in the untrusting ways the Latinos seem to at first regard Homer's vision and capacities as less than efficient. Homer's human dignity is encapsulated in his "black" dignity, one of the central concepts of the novel and the film.
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stargzer
8 years ago
His skin color is definitely important. The nuns are German, but Catholic religious, not racist Nazis from the War barely 20 years past. His skin color doesn't matter to them since Mother Superior believes he was sent by God. His skin color does matter to others at first, even Hispanics at the lower end of the social scale, but in the end it is his character, and his quest to build a chapel, that brings everyone together. It's a homily of sorts, that character and actions count for more in the Eyes of God than the color of one's skin. This would not be the same movie with any other character, even an Asian, as Homer Smith. At that place and time, the American Southwest in the late 1950s to early 1960s, Homer had to be a Black American. Sidney Poitier may have been the only one who could have brought it off.
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