Admit it, we still have race problems in college – Dear White People just points that out

Post-racial college campuses are just as fictional as this show

Yesterday, Netflix released the trailer for their new original series “Dear White People” which is the TV adaptation of the 2014 crowdfunded feature film of the same name. The trailer begins with the protagonist of the show Samantha White, speaking on her campus radio show (which apparently is broadcast over some sort of campus-wide PA system?) at fictional Ivy League Winchester University about acceptable Halloween costumes. She says “Dear White People: Here’s a list of acceptable Halloween costumes. Pirate, slutty nurse, any of our first 43 presidents. Top of the list of unacceptable costumes: Me”. It then cuts to a montage of white students partying while offensively dressed in blackface.

Naturally at hearing the news, delicate alt-right broflakes and their MAGA hat wearing-acolytes took to Twitter to let Netflix know that they would be promptly cancelling their subscriptions because “what if there was a show called Dear Black People” (oh btw there already is, we just don’t call it that. It’s the reality TV show that is the Trump Presidency). Which is exactly the same bullshit complaint that I’ve been hearing about BET since I was a teenager (I’m not a huge fan of BET but they’re getting better).

And with Black Twitter being the great American institution that it is…there was also some clapback.

But aside from all of that ridiculousness, it’s time that we, as a country, own up. The show has a point. A poignant and salient point about the current state of race relations at PWIs (Private White Institutions) across the country. And it has a point because campus culture at many schools allows it to. Even Columbia University, our own extremely liberal and allegedly woke campus, has been marred by a scandal where the wrestling team had been sending racist messages in a group chat over a series of three years, and a sorority donned racially stereotypical costumes for its “Beer Olympics” party. This same sentiment about the state of race relations on college campuses was also echoed when I interviewed Shaun King a few months ago.

I shouldn’t have to waste my time linking to more examples of white students at white schools doing overtly racist shit because you know how to use Google, but you can find very recent examples here, here, here, a whole shit ton more here, and the lovely song in the video below.

So instead of all the outrage and white tears about the movie and the show, America needs to wake up and realize that these expensive supposedly liberal and inclusive institutions that we have fooled ourselves into believing exist in some hermetically sealed post racial utopia, actually do not. The white students who attend these institutions are influenced by the society which they’ve grown up in, and bring all of those biases and racist traditions with them to these schools like their favorite quilt from home. So as long as white people keep doing these racist things, we will have to keep correcting their behavior in polite and not so polite ways. And one of those ways will start off by writing “Dear White People”.

Dear White People premieres on Netflix on April 28th. There are exactly 19 more days of Black History Month left. Make em count.

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