Dear White People(2014)
dir. Justin Simien
Campus satire about being Black in white rooms.
Where to watch: Free on Kanopy, Hoopla; Prime VideoLetterboxd ↗
At the fictional Ivy League Winchester University, a student named Sam White hosts a campus radio show called Dear White People, and a blackface party blows the campus open. The film follows four Black students working out who they are in a place that wants them to be one thing. A campus satire played straight, with sharp jokes and no easy heroes.
Why it’s here
The film takes the 'post-racial' campus story and shows how every Black student is asked to perform one version of themselves. What's punk is that the satire turns on its own heroes too. What's pedagogical is the vocabulary it gives you: code-switching, respectability, who gets to define blackness. It sits next to Sorry to Bother You in the catalog.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- North America
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
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Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story about Racial Injustice
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The book for the conversation you've been avoiding.
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The Sellout
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A Modest Proposal
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Eat the babies. Swift's ten-page masterclass in satire.
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American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang
Three stories. One argument about what assimilation costs.
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Americanah
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Left Nigeria. Learned she was Black in America.
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Anger Is a Gift
Mark Oshiro
The anger you've been told to put down.
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