The Best Man Holiday opened this weekend to impressive box office sales of over $30 million dollars, second only to the Marvel superhero flick Thor. However, the success of the Malcolm D. Lee-directed movie, as it nearly took down a theater titan, was slightly overshadowed by USA Today splashing “Holiday nearly beats ‘Thor’ as race-themed films soar” across their site and Twitter timelines early Sunday afternoon.

Zeroing in on the falsehood of pegging this black romantic comedy as “race-themed,” tweeters scrutinized and quickly initiated the #USATodayHeadlines trending topic, using creativity to show the ridiculousness of such a headline. USA Today later edited the title from “race-themed” to “diverse” and reissued the tweet.

But the response to USA Today‘s ignorance and misunderstanding about the film shows just how important a film with a predominantly black cast that doesn’t focus on race but encompasses themes of family, friendship, love and success is to African Americans. It provides an African-American audience with a movie that isn’t blatantly focused about race like most of the other AA releases of the year–The Butler, Fruitvale Station and 12 Years As A Slave. While all are outstanding films that have made their way into the Oscars conversation, The Best Man Holiday is a great representation of how Blacks, educated and successful, live their lives outside of the struggle or injustices of the community.

Simply put: TBMH is quality entertainment that would not only be enjoyable by moviegoers that look like Nia Long & Co. but also people of any race. Its performance in theaters threatening to unseat one of Hollywood’s yearly heavy hitters further shows just how important it is to see a familiar face not dealing with racial undertones onscreen. – DeShawn Woodards