Dear White People

Justin Simien’s début feature Dear White People is a story about campus politics and race relations at a fictional Ivy League college. The ambitious and overcrowded film contains many characters of various races but centers on five African American students each representing a different shade on the spectrum of ways to “be black” at an historically white institution. Troy (Brandon P. Bell) is the assimilated son of the college’s dean of students (Dennis Haysbert). Troy’s got six-pack abs, looks great in a suit and tie, dreams of a career in politics by way of TV comedy, and dates the white daughter of the college president.  Reggie (Marque Richardson) the head of the black student union looks down on Troy as a sellout.  Coco (Teyonah Parris) is an ambitious freshman with a video blog, who’s trying to decide if she wants to reject or embrace her roots as a black girl from the South Side of Chicago. Lionel (Tyler James Williams), a freshman who wants to be a journalist, can’t fit in anywhere because he’s a shy, gay, Trekie. Last, but not least, there’s Sam (Tessa Thompson), a mixed race girl who buries her white side and hosts a campus radio show called “Dear White People,” in which she offers barbed advice to the school’s majority population. 

That description of the characters makes it sound like Simien drew his inspiration from Alan Parker’s Fame as much as from Spike Lee’s School Daze, John Singleton’s Higher Learning, or Robert Mandel’s School Ties.  Dear White People suffers from the same lack of focus and absence of depth that plagued the now-quaint seeming ‘80s musical.  There also isn’t much edge or bite to Dear White People. Simien introduces some provocative situations but everything unfolds too neatly and earnestly. The film is more whimsical than satirical, more docile than confrontational. These qualities, combined with a rather clumsy shooting style, reminded me of Whit Stillman’s enjoyable but forgettable college-life sendup Damsels in Distress.

The young cast of Dear White People is strong but their characters aren’t fully fleshed out. They never fully devolve into stereotypes, but never rise beyond being just types. No one gets enough screen time and many of the scenes are repetitive. If, as the title suggests, the story centered on Sam, her radio show, and the transformation she undergoes when unexpectedly elected head of the house where most of the black students live, the film might deliver a more powerful punch. Sam and her influence on campus are the most charged and alive aspects of the picture, and they directly or indirectly inspire most of its major events including the climatic, racist Halloween party. Yet Sam becomes curiously inactive and practically absent in the film’s final third. In trying to give equal screen time to his ensemble of characters, Simien ends up shortchanging them all. This is especially true of the supporting roles. Haysbert’s dean of students seems to realize he’s a token hire, but we never get a clear sense of how he feels about it. The character of the racist, homophobic, white jerkwad who throws the climactic party (Kyle Gallner) and his money-obsessed college president father (Peter Syvertsen) are nothing more then broad, clichéd, toothless antagonists.  

Simien deserves praise for getting this movie made and for putting these issues up on the screen. Popular fiction films that explore contemporary race relations have practically disappeared since their heyday in the 1990s, which is surprising given the current combination of real-life tensions and greater access to filmmaking. I’m sure we’ll be getting more movies from this director and I look forward to checking out what comes next. Dear White People, like another politically charged indie from 2014, Obvious Child, is a movie I’d like to champion for what it aspires to do, but I can’t fully endorse the result.