‘Trading Places,’ the Duke Brothers, and the True Roots of Racism

The disciples of Intersectionality, much like Randolph and Mortimer, don’t see people as individuals, but in terms of their group identity.

Every December, there’s a great deal of debate over whether Die Hard qualifies as a Christmas movie. It does, but I think the discussion overshadows another great ‘80s movie that should also be considered a Christmas flick: Trading Places.

I hadn’t seen Trading Places in ages, but it was recently trending on Paramount+, apparently because others recognize it as a Christmas movie. So I rewatched it.

John Landis’s classic comedy stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as, respectively, Louis Winthorpe III, a wealthy commodities broker, and Billy Ray Valentine, a streetwise con artist, whose lives are upended during the Christmas season by the devious Duke brothers, Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer (Don Ameche).

The story begins when the Dukes can’t agree whether success is determined by nature (one’s innate abilities) or nurture (one’s environment), so they decide to make a bet and conduct a social experiment: see how Winthorpe and Billy Ray respond when their roles are reversed.

Winthorpe is stripped of his wealth, job, and social standing after he’s framed for theft and drug possession; he loses his girlfriend and is forced to find sanctuary with a sex worker named Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis). Billy Ray is elevated from the streets to high society. He’s given Winthorpe’s home, job, and life — even his butler, Coleman (Denholm Elliott).

‘He’s Right, Mortimer!’

When I first watched Trading Places as a kid, I didn’t really think about the ideas in the movie. I just laughed. But watching the film in 2024 was a different experience.

Thomas Lennon, who wrote an adaptation of the comedy for the stage, is right when he calls Trading Places “almost Shakespearean.” The script isn’t just a comedy, but a cheeky piece of social commentary that playfully explores class, privilege, and race.

Trading Places isn’t Blazing Saddles, but modern audiences will find themselves squirming during some of the racial dialogue, particularly that of the Duke brothers, who display both overt and subtle racism even as they elevate Billy Ray, who turns out to be a shrewd commodities trader. The streetwise Billy Ray saves the brothers millions by convincing them to hold off buying pork bellies because he realized prices, which had been falling all morning, would sink even lower.

Randolph Duke: Exactly why do you think the price of pork bellies is going to keep going down, William?

Billy Ray Valentine: Okay. Pork belly prices have been dropping all morning, which means that everybody’s waiting for it to hit rock bottom so they can buy cheap and go long. Which means that the people who own the pork belly contracts are goin’ bat-sh*. They’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re losing all our goddamn money, and Christmas is just around the corner, and I ain’t gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip, right? And my wife won’t f… my wife won’t make love to me ‘cuz I ain’t got no money, right?’ So they’re panicking right now, they’re screaming ‘SELL! SELL!’ to get out before the price keeps dropping. They’re panicking out there right now! I can feel it! They out there!

Randolph Duke: [on the ticker machine, the price keeps dropping] He’s right, Mortimer! My God, look at it!

Billy Ray Valentine: I’d wait until you get to around sixty-four, THEN I’d buy. You’ll have cleared out all the suckers by then.

Randolph Duke: This is Randolph Duke. Advise our clients interested in bellies to buy at sixty-four. Mr. Valentine has set the price. [He punches up the numbers on his calculator] … Do you realize how much money he just saved us?

“Mr. Valentine” is saving the Dukes and their clients gobs of money, but it doesn’t take long to see that the brothers are only interested in their nature-nurture social experiment, which will determine the outcome of a $1 bet. (Randolph is betting on nurture over nature.) Worse, we see Mortimer and Randolph are both racist.

‘A Musical People’

We hear a great deal about racism in 2024, but Trading Places gives us a good example of two different types.

One type can be seen in Mortimer’s overt racism, which comes up after their bet is concluded. With Winthorpe a broken criminal, and Billy Ray a successful and polished trader, Randolph has won the bet. Things can now go back to normal, and Randolph proposes bringing Winthorpe back to the financial firm. Mortimer has other ideas.

Mortimer: I don’t want Winthorpe back, after what he’s done.

Randolph: You mean, keep Valentine on as managing director?

Mortimer: Do you really believe I would have a n*gger run our family business, Randolph?

The word sounds harsh, and it’s meant to sound harsh; the Dukes are the villains of the movie, and their downfall is sewn in this very scene. (Billy Ray overhears their conversation while hiding in a bathroom stall; he will enlist Winthorpe, and together they develop a plan to take the Dukes down.)

This isn’t the only example of racism we see from the brothers, of course. Randolph is the kinder, gentler Duke; but earlier in the film his softer bias shows when he praises Billy Ray, who is singing in the jacuzzi while enjoying his new luxurious lifestyle.

“They’re a very musical people, aren’t they?” Randolph says, smiling affectionately.

Randolph’s racism appears less severe than Mortimer’s. After all, denying a man a job because of his race and using a racial slur is much harsher than observing musical talent (real or perceived) in a group of people. But both are examples of racism; and the audience sees this clearly. Moreover, we later see that Randolph’s kinder, gentler racism is not far removed from Mortimer’s, since Randolph agrees with his brother following his racist outburst.

Not everyone might agree with this analysis, of course. Some may argue that Mortimer is more racist than Randolph. What’s important to understand is that the racism of the Duke brothers comes from the same place: they fail to see Billy Ray as an individual, even after testing his mettle.

‘Constructions of Whiteness’

If you ask ten people what racism is, you’re likely to get ten different answers.

“Racism is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity.” (Wiki)

“Racism is the belief that humans can be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called ‘races.’” (Britannica)

Racism: “a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” (Merriam-Webster)

All of these definitions fit into that of Ayn Rand.

“[Racism] is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry,” Rand wrote in The Virtue of Selfishness. “Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”

Rand, an individualist, called racism “the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism” — and she was right. Unfortunately, this primitive collectivism was institutionalized in America for much of the twentieth century through Jim Crow laws, which marginalized African Americans and enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement in the South.

Jim Crow is dead today, but racism, of course, is not. It lives on in people who see others not as individuals, but in terms of group identity. In some cases, racism has been merged with other forms of collectivism such as Intersectionality, a sociological framework that sees virtually all social interactions through the lens of discrimination and privilege.

The disciples of this worldview, much like Randolph and Mortimer, don’t see people as individuals, but in terms of their group identity. Consider the words of Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling book How to Be an Antiracist.

“I don’t think white people worldwide have really reckoned with how much their own personal identity is shaped by constructions of whiteness,” Kendi said during a recent talk. “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.”

One needn’t have a PhD to see that despite all of this fancy language, Kendi’s “antiracism” is deeply racist. Like Randolph and Mortimer, he doesn’t see people as individuals; he sees them in terms of their race (in this case “whiteness”).

Trading Places managed to make us laugh while revealing some ugly (but common) racial attitudes of the 1980s. We can only hope the humorists of tomorrow will have similar fun with some of the pernicious-but-prevalent attitudes and ideas of the New Racists, which have become embedded in our institutions.

Evidence suggests that such critique by comedy may already be underway.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Economy.