Dear White People
Nosce Te Ipsum (Know Thyself)
The balls on this movie.
Dear White People (2014) is a comedy liberally sprinkled with witty, lighthearted dialogue1, but also includes a vile college president who talks to a student using some of the most chilling language I’ve heard: “And I think you long for days when blacks were hanging from trees and denied actual rights. That way you would have something to actually fight against.”
This movie revolves around Sam White (portrayed perfectly by Tessa Thompson), a strong, independent black woman, who carves a place for herself and other black students at a majority-white university. Yet, it is a clear-eyed white man who tells Sam who she really is, helping her reach her potential (like a magical Anglo?).
These aren’t faults or inconsistencies that I find in the movie. These are brave decisions made by the writer/director Justin Simien that could have easily turned off an audience expecting a mindless, milquetoast comedy or a one-sided celebration of black excellence where white characters are just speed bumps.
Dear White People is the name of the radio show Sam, a media arts major, uses to deliver PSA-style messages to the students of Winchester University, a fictional Ivy League school. She calls out the restrictive social circles of the majority-white student body: “Dear white people, the minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, but your weed man, Tyrone, does not count.” Other messages seek to teach basic etiquette to feral whites: “Dear white people, please stop touching my hair. Does this look like a petting zoo to you?”
Sam is smart and seems to have her shit together. She wins an election to lead the Armstrong-Parker House, a residential house that fosters black culture. Her central platform is the repeal of the Randomization of Housing Act, a policy that means the end of Armstrong-Parker since black students can no longer choose to live there.
Sam wrote Ebony and Ivy, a zine about the black experience at the white-dominated Winchester University, in which she lists three categories of black people on campus. Sam argues black people can only survive in a place like Winchester by being an Oofta (“a jazz-age term for Bojangles types who blacked it up for white audiences”), a nose job (people who “smooth their black edges and try to blend in”), or by keeping it one hundred (“being black as hell just ‘cause”).
Conveniently, Ebony and Ivy serves as a guide to understanding the movie’s main characters:
Troy (Brandon P. Bell), the previous leader of the Armstrong-Parker House, is the Oofta. He sees himself as the black friend white people dream of having. He delights his friends by voicing taboo subjects white students know they must avoid, but are drawn to like moths to a flame, like when he riffs on how the access prominent black men like Tiger Woods, Wesley Snipes, OJ, and himself have to white women can be seen as reparations (“Forty white bitches and a mule.”).
Coco, a student from Chicago, is the nose job. She tells people she’s from Hyde Park (which ends around 59th St.), but lives deep in the South Side (78th St.). She wears blue contact lenses and covers her natural hair with a weave. She goes by Coco when her given name is Colandrea, a name, she says, in one of her more candid moments, that “doesn’t exactly pass the resume test.”
Sam thinks she’s keeping it one hundred, but lacks the militancy of a character like Reggie, the smoothest computer science student who has ever walked the planet. He rejects others for not being sufficiently black. He asks Troy if he’s majoring in shucking or jiving. He initially rejected Sam for having mixed heritage (“I don’t even really be messing with no Redbone chicks like that.”) Reggie pushes Sam into an ugly confrontation with the administration that included signs referring to a black administrator as Dean Uncle Tom. In contrast, Sam’s idea for repealing the Housing Randomization Act is a strongly-worded petition.
Midway through the movie, a student tells Troy about T-Bone Walker, but Troy cuts him off saying, “White people always be on stuff decades too late, and y’all wanna try to act like you discovered some shit.” If I weren’t so concerned about being that kid, I would tell you this movie is a gem and that I can’t believe I just discovered it now. The writing is stunning, searing, and hilarious. This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years, and it confounds me that the writer/director, Justin Simien, who must be some kind of motherfucking genius, has such a brief filmography.
I mentioned this movie has balls (forgive me, I’m from the Midwest, and if trucks can have nuts, so can movies), and there’s one last thing to add. Early on, Sam takes a call on her radio show from a white caller who asks how she would feel if someone started a show called Dear Black People. Sam says that would be unnecessary since mass media makes it clear what white people think. But this is that show. It’s dicey for black people to criticize other black people (e.g., see what happened every time Bill Cosby opened his mouth in the days before we found out he was a serial rapist), but this movie does it it. Although Dear White People sounds like a movie critical of whites, it’s a lovingly packaged, patient critique of black people as well, with little malice toward Ooftas, nose jobs, or anyone keeping it one hundred2.
Dear White People
Written and directed by Justin Simien
2014
108 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Max
You’ll like this if you don’t like: Big Momma’s House 3
Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, this one really did it for me:
Professor Bodkin: Yeah, and might I also remind you that I read your entire 15-page unsolicited treatise on why the Gremlins is actually about suburban white fear of black culture.
Sam: The Gremlins are loud, talk in slang, are addicted to fried chicken and freak out when you get their hair wet.
As a bonus, the movie even offers advice for surviving Trump II. When interviewed by the dean regarding her involvement in a frat party that became a race riot, Sam says, “It wasn’t speeches that turned the tide for civil rights. It was the anarchists willing to provoke the police, get sprayed by hoses, anything that caused a scene and made press.”