By James Murray

After years in the making and a coveted spot in the highlight reel at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Dear White People has made it’s national debut. The movie tackles the issue of race in the age of Obama. However, the message of the film is that little has changed.

Like The Breakfast Club, the film echoes the timeless theme of young people wanting to be seen for who they truly are by both parents and peers, and more importantly, accepted for it. If anything, Dear White People is a cautionary tale of the problems that arise when blackness is commercialized and seen as performative.

The movie largely centers around four black students who attend a fictional Ivy-League university known as “Winchester University”. They deal with the dynamics of the expectations of those within their collegial circle and those outside of it as a  fraternity plans a fried chicken, watermelon, and blackface theme party.

Samantha White played by  actress Tessa Thompson is an aspiring bi-racial filmmaker who’s struggling to deal with her father’s cancer while juggling her studies, student activism and her radio show, “Dear White People”. The show is dedicated to telling her largely white audience about the slights she and her black peers endure. Sam’s militancy is a cover for her hurt and amorous desires and prevents her from being viewed as a complex individual.

At the other end of the spectrum is the assimilationist: Colandrea Conners or “Coco” played by Teyonah Parris. CoCo is a provocateur who stirs up trouble by supporting the party. She interprets the adoption by whites of black culture as flattering and derides Sam’s radio show in a YouTube commentary.

Brandon B. Bell delivers a moving performance as Troy Fairbanks who fights tooth and nail to please his father, Dean Fairbanks played by Dennis Haysbert of 24 . Dean Fairbanks is constantly reminding his son of the words uttered in many a black household, “You have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” The Dean is reminded of this timeless sentiment daily because he and his boss, the president of the University, attended the university at the same time yet Dean Fairbanks did not become the president in spite of his superior academic excellence.

Finally, there’s Lionel Higgins, played by Tyler Williams James of Everybody Hates Chris.  He’s a gay student who wants to impress the school’s newspaper staff by writing an article about the impending party.

But, his race and sexuality complicate things and as a result, he is often relegated to an afterthought by black and white alike. The black students deal with the repeated rejection of their white peers and in some cases, their black peers. The film underscores the limitations that narrowly defined character sketches impose on the black students. And, it brings to mind a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

 

James Murray is a freelance writer from Little Rock, Arkansas. He enjoys philosophy and Eric Rohmer films.