“Dear White People” (2014) is a US film about White racism. It follows four Black students at the fictional Winchester University, a predominately White institution (PWI) where rich White people send their children. It has since become a television series on Netflix. This post is only about the film.
The film now seems dated – even though it is only three and a half years old. It came out in October 2014, just in time for Halloween. But as it showed in cinemas, protesters were marching in Ferguson, already making the film seem out-of-date and quaint. The rise of Trump in 2016 and the Neo-Nazi violence of the Charlottesville riot in 2017 have made it seem quainter still. It now seems so 2013.
It starts with Samantha White, one of the main characters, calling out White racism on the university radio station. Even that now seems dated: in the Trump Era, White racism no longer wears sheep’s clothing – it calls itself out.
Even so, you can see the Trump Era racism already starting to show through. The Halloween party at the end, despite the costumes, becomes an unmasking, showing White people as they truly are. There is a reason they want to say the N-word. That racism has always been there, of course, since at least the 1700s, covered over in politically correct noises in the late 1900s. But with the Trump Era, Whites are hiding it less and less.
The four main characters each deal with “being a black face in a white place” differently:
- Samantha – woke: protests, calls out racism.
- Lionel – invisible: avoids trouble or notice, does not pick sides.
- Troy – twice as good: tries to integrate and beat Whites at their own game.
- Coco – coon: plays to White stereotypes to gain their favour.
Except for Samantha, they are trying to get in good with White people. And, over the course of the film they see what a fool’s errand that is. Whatever few favours they gain, they are still seen as nothing but a “nigger”.
The good:
- A film about racism where Black characters get most of the lines. It can be done!
- Unlike most films, it does not coon – and even makes fun of that by way of Coco.
- It shows how Black people do not all think alike.
The bad:
- The trailer was better.
- Seems like it would work better as a script than a film. Some of its best lines go by too quick and are not underscored by the film. Probably needs to be watched more than once.
- The main White character is cartoonish (but, to be fair, he is a study in nuance compared to the racist trolls on the Internet).
- It does seem like it would work better as a television series than a film.
It bills itself as a satire. It did not seem like a satire to me.
Overall, not as as good as a Spike Lee film, but it is still worth watching. Especially since Spike Lee seems to be semi-retired.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
- Dear White People: the trailer
- coon
- Ferguson
- The N-word
- Halloween
- The Trump Era – the post I wrote on Day One
- being Black at a PWI (non-fictional):
- 1957: Elizabeth Eckford
- 1957: Dorothy Counts
- 1972: Lorene Cary: Black Ice
- 1979: Obama at Occidental College
- 1997: Why all the Black kids sit together
- 2015: The Mizzou Campus Protests
- 2015: Halloween at Yale
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