Dear White People – a movie review

I could end this review with that statement, but I’m not.  It was too good for me to just do that.  ‘Dear White People’ (in my opinion) was a mockumentary about the different black students you encounter at a PWI (Predominantly White Institution).  I knew I wanted to see this movie the first time I heard about it because it was my life in undergrad, or at least the first two years of it.  I just knew I’d go in and hear the good ‘ol Fugee’s cover of Roberta Flack’s hit.

It helped that I went with two other friends who also attended the same university and had a similar experience.  Now, don’t get me wrong UT Tyler is a great university.  I received a top notch education there, made some life-long friends, and even joined a sorority that isn’t in the Divine 9, but I couldn’t help relating to the character a few of the characters in this movie: Troy (sans his drug use), Sam (more so when I got home and finished up at UH-D), and Lionel (as far as greek life goes).  Like I said, I never felt out of place or unease with any of the situations in college because I was used to that growing up in grade school, but seeing all of these “stereotypes” thrown back in my face made me realize something.  My experience being one of the few black students at a PWI was pretty common.  Now, I didn’t experience too many acts of flat out racism, but there were times I had to answer questions like “what’s a weave?” “you mean you don’t wash your hair everyday?” and “a perm makes your hair straight?”.  Come to think of it a lot of my questions in social settings had to do more with my hair.

Now my ‘fro wasn’t as big as Lionel’s in undergrad, in fact I didn’t stop chemically straightening it until I was in college, but now it’s big and fluffy when I wear it out and I have to constantly tell people to ask my permission before they dive in with their fingers.  And by people I mean everyone!  Black, white, Hispanic, etc.  It’s like people gravitate towards my curls and while I love the occasional scalp massage, I’d like to at least be asked if you can touch my hair.

I’m not sure if you guys know this, but Tyler, TX is in East Texas as in desegregation order in East Texas.  I was already in shock that I’d be attending a school in a dry county, but to hear that there was a special desegregation order for the area floored me.  I didn’t experience too many instances of outright racism, but there were a few incidents that I immediately addressed.  Of course that led to the discussion of racism with friends and I found myself saying the following statement more often than once:

Black people can be prejudice, but not racist.  Racism is defined as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races”.  In this situation Blacks are in a disadvantage so it’s not racism, it’s prejudice or just flat out hatred.  But that’s another blog post, I don’t want to get into that right now.  

I actually laughed while watching this movie, like a lot because there were quite a few funny scenes.  

Haha!  The age old debate of the term ‘mulatto’.