Samantha White doesn’t mince words. On her radio show at Winchester University, she gives stern advice to white students: Stop touching your black classmates’ hair. And don’t date them just to irritate your parents.
Something you should know about Winchester University: It doesn’t exist. Neither does Ms. White. But the frustrations she expresses as the mixed-race protagonist of a new movie, Dear White People, are real.
“My first reaction to it was: Finally,” said Collin D. Williams Jr., a 26-year-old doctoral student in higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. “Finally somebody engaged this critically important topic that goes undiscussed but is incredibly relevant to any experience you have as a minority student.”
Billed as “a satire about being a black face in a white place,” Dear White People is set at a private, predominantly white institution where racial tensions are about to boil over. The flashpoints in the movie sound like events on real-world campuses—a plan to diversify a traditionally black residence hall and a Halloween party, thrown by a campus humor magazine, that invites students to “unleash your inner Negro.”
Written and directed by Justin Simien, the film has been generating buzz since winning the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. It opens on Friday in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, and nationwide at the end of next week.
Students and professors from institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the College of Wooster, and Harvard University attended recent preview screenings hosted by the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the “I, Too, Am Harvard Blacktivism Conference: Mobilizing Youth for Racial Justice in the 21st Century.”
Who better to tell us whether the movie lives up to the hype? We asked seven viewers how Dear White People’s themes resonated with their own campus experiences:
First Impressions
Emerald F. Rutledge, sophomore at the College of Wooster: “I was so appreciative of the fact that [Simien] was able to pinpoint the experiences of students of color on my campus. … I was able to sit in the film and say: ‘Oh, that’s happened to me. Oh, that’s happened to my friends.’ He chose to tell those stories in a way that was comical but that was really real.”
Collin D. Williams Jr., doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania: “It’s supposed to be a satire, but all of the ridiculous things that happen, something incredibly similar has happened to me.”
Cecilia Sanders, junior at Harvard University: “I honestly spent about half of the movie sobbing. … It’s exhausting to see all of those bad things that have happened to you and your friends on the screen together.”
Anthea Butler, associate professor of religion and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania: “Over all, I liked it. I think some of it is very relevant, but I think I probably would have portrayed it in somewhat different ways. As a professor, I’ve seen almost every one of those characters.”
Individuals vs. Stereotypes
Four black protagonists—the director calls them archetypes—experience Winchester University, informed by their own personalities and motivations. Do the characters feel true to life?
Geralyn Gaines, senior at the University of Michigan: “What I really liked about the film is that it kind of helped to pinpoint a lot of different characters we see in our own communities. The president of the house is a very militant black woman fighting for rights of black women. Another girl is not trying to fight the fight, more trying to assimilate into white American culture. I think they perfectly described each person.”
Collin D. Williams Jr.: “It was very Du Boisian. In The Souls of Black Folk, he describes how the American Negro dealt with this dualistic pressure: What does it mean to be an American? And what does it mean to be black?”
Loren K. Robinson, graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania: “The message I came away with was how important it was to be your real self, whatever that means, and to define it for yourself, not let someone else define it for you. No matter what, people are going to pass judgment.”
The Role of Minority-Student Organizations
Plans to randomize housing at the university’s traditionally black dormitory worry black students, who value the sense of community they’ve built there. Are minority organizations and dedicated residence halls a key piece of black students’ campus experience?
Geralyn Gaines: “I think the Black Student Union plays an integral role in the community. … It’s always been a safe haven for students to congregate and discuss issues.”
Collin D. Williams Jr.: “I cannot be more direct in saying, as somebody who has gone to predominantly black and predominantly white institutions: This was right on in terms of students’ being at the forefront of change.”
Cecilia Sanders: “Maybe it feels diverse sitting in your choir rehearsal, singing songs of the African diaspora. You can think, Wow, there are people who are like me here. But the next day, you go to your military-history class, and it’s all white men. … Students, as a result of feeling excluded from some spaces, have formed other spaces that feel safe, free from that responsibility of representing all black people.”
Campus Climate
Black students’ protests against the plan to diversity housing dredge up racial tension across the campus, which Samantha White skewers via her radio show. Are campuses as racially fraught as the film suggests?
Cecilia Sanders: “Someone touching your hair without permission, someone making a side comment about how articulate you are, someone expecting you to like certain types of music—all were experiences I’ve had. I was feeling very represented in ways that were painful but also very good. I had never seen myself in a character on the screen like that before.”
Collin D. Williams Jr.: “Just yesterday … a student says to me, ‘Someone in my hall called me a nigger,’ and she didn’t know what to say. That’s crazy.”
Geralyn Gaines: “The only thing I think the movie did that was not necessarily true to my experience was they made it seem like all minorities are in the struggle together. We all have struggles, but we’re fighting different fights. … I didn’t like the way it made it seem like you can assume other minorities are with you.”
Offensive Campus Parties
To strike back at the protagonist for her activism, white members of the campus humor magazine throw a racially charged Halloween party. Violence ensues when black, Asian, and Hispanic students crash the party and find white students wearing Obama masks and blackface. Believable?
Loren K. Robinson: “It’s an archetype of so many parties that have happened on college campuses in recent years as black culture gets commodified.”
Geralyn Gaines: At the University of Michigan, “there was this ‘hood ratchet Thursday party’ going to occur. We caught it before it was going to happen, and a complaint was written by students not in the Black Student Union. There were sanctions put on the fraternity.”
Collin D. Williams Jr.: When the undergraduate black men he mentors discuss the University of Pennsylvania, “they love it, it’s great—except for frat parties thrown by mainstream white fraternities. It’s the one area of campus life where all the indignities tend to happen on campus.”
Cecilia Sanders: At Harvard, “I don’t think there have been any parties on that level. That said, Halloween is coming up, and somehow every Halloween I end up having the same conversation with people: No, you can’t wear blackface.”
Camille Z. Charles, professor of sociology, Africana studies, and education at the University of Pennsylvania: “Typically, when students decide on those kinds of themes, in the best-case scenario they are tone-deaf and insensitive. In the worst case, they are actively prejudiced. I think most of the time they are just insensitive. This is part of what happens when we can’t have conversations about race.”