Mon. March 2

Is time to see "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" again (or for you young 'uns, for the first time) given our political landscape? You know, a black man in the White House and all that. Stanley Kramer’s 1967 film that broke new ground in dealing with the controversial subject of interracial marriage. We remember it as ground-breaking, hough-provoking and barrier-breaking. We also remember Sidney Poitier as the most handsome, erudite man (black or white) we'd seen on film in a long time. How could you not love him, even if you were raised to be a proud cracker? (Well, I suppose you could; this film came out in the maw of the Civil Rights movement and sides were drawn.) But the parents who were confronted with their daughter's choice of a black man as a spouse were not crackers. They were liberals. Mmm, liberals put to the test. (Think about the busing era in Boston. Supported by good liberals from the 'burbs, while the white folks with money in the city sent an awful lot of their kids to private schools. JSInk theory: Hypocrisy and greed will be with us always.) It's up at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Monday March 2 at 7, part of their Science on Screen series. (Science part explalined later ... )
Kramer's idea was to debunk racial stereotypes and that he did. When young Joanna Drayton brought her new fiancé home to San Francisco to meet her parents, putting their progressive leanings are put to the test. Poitier, who'd dazzled us it "To Sir, With Love" played Dr. John Wade Prentice, no Black Panther he. So what do the preconceived notions of Mr. and Mrs. Drayton (Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, in their last on-screen pairing) do during dinner one evening? The film earned Oscars for Hepburn and screenwriter William Rose.

The science? Discussing prejudice will be Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji, a pioneer in the study of unconscious bias. Banaji is the Richard Clarke Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard.  She has spent over 20 years studying the implicit and explicit prejudices of both adults and children. Her findings have uncovered that all of us (including educated liberals like the Draytons) carry unconscious attitudes about race, age and gender that sometimes run contrary to our admitted beliefs. Her groundbreaking research includes the use of methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive medical imaging technique to measure neural activity, and the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a quiz that utilizes word and image associations to measure bias. Ticekts: $9.75.

290 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-734-25000 www.coolidgeorg