Dear White People… really? They’re coming out with a movie called Dear White People?
As an undergrad interested in social justice, my friends assumed I’d jump at the chance to go see the latest Sundance-winning college satire addressing acts of institutionalized racism and common misconceptions of minorities, particularly African Americans.
To their disappointment, I wasn’t keen on paying to go see a movie called Dear White People, and after watching the trailer, I remained unconvinced that the film offered anything more than a relatively shallow portrayal of the relations between whites and blacks in today’s society.
My biggest problem was that the movie seemed to focus entirely too much on overt, ‘old-style’ racism (“Sometimes I think the hardest thing to be in the American workforce is an educated white guy”) and not enough on the often subliminal, institutionalized racism arguably more present in our society today.
Yet on a Tuesday night at Amherst Cinema, I found myself buying my ticket and taking my seat to give the film an honest shot – mostly because it had been a hectic couple of weeks, and I desperately needed to go see a movie and take a break from life.
After watching the film, I would say that a lot of my initial suspicions were correct. Chock-full of loaded one-liners that virtually screamed ‘I’m a racist,’ I feared that those who were watching would easily dismiss the idea that racism is still a tremendous problem in today’s society, simply following the logic that “No one actually says things like this anymore.”
While that assertion is certainly not true and shouldn’t be taken as such (take the horrific, racially-motivated death threats issued to African American and ‘Mexican’ students on our campus a few weeks ago), these kinds of hateful, blatantly discriminatory remarks are significantly less common than the deeply-embedded, frighteningly present institutionalized acts of racism that often manifest themselves through political, economic, and social means, rather than legal constraints or racial slurs.
The film’s dialogue also tended to be very dense and verbose, and the acting wasn’t always the best.
Yet I was happily surprised by the areas in which the film did succeed. There was a good emphasis, for example, on different intersections of identity, and the consequences that these identifiers can have on an individual’s experience.
Lionel, one of my favorite characters, specifically dealt with not only the racism barrier, but also the social stigma of identifying with a sexual orientation other than heterosexuality (although Lionel doesn’t explicitly identify as being gay, bearing in mind that there are more than two sexualities; his character says that he doesn’t “like labels”).
Another strength of the film was its use of satire to suggest certain themes and overarching messages to the audience.
One particular scene that stood out to me occurred roughly midway through the film, in which the Dean of the school tells Samantha (the film’s main protagonist) that her radio show segment, ‘Dear White People’, is racist, to which she replies, “Black people can’t be racist. Prejudiced, yes, but not racist. Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can’t be racist since we don’t stand to benefit from such a system.”
Yet as the film progresses, the writers work to deconstruct and disparage Sam’s argument by proving to her, and to the audience, that all people are capable of committing acts of racism or being influenced by racist ideologies, and even more, that all people should be aware of their susceptibility to these ideologies and actively fight against them.
Many of the film’s more comedic moments also went over well with the audience, easing tension when placed in the right context.
But arguably the film’s greatest success was its exposé of white-dominated blackface parties, which apparently really do exist. As the film’s credits rolled and actual images from these Black-culture-themed college parties flashed across the screen, I felt my stomach drop.
These disturbingly cruel and derogatory images stayed with me long after we had left the theater, and if for no other reason, I felt grateful that such a film exists, as it allows us the opportunity to assess how far our society has left to go before we can truly say that racism “no longer exists.”