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Post 11/30

Dear White People is an insightful drama that gives us a portrayal of a primarily all-white university and the discriminatory experiences of the black population within it. I believe this film takes an unconventional way of illustrating the discrimination faced by black students. It is relatively blunt and direct when addressing the racism the black students face from the white students. I think this bluntness was an effective strategy as we have discussed the importance of the media in making Americans more aware of our society’s racial issues. This film did a good job at combining a plotline that engages young viewers with a relevant commentary about the life of college students but also fills the plot with heavy, yet common issues faced by black students in America’s colleges today.  In today’s society, our media must find a way to get audiences hooked and entertained by a film while also remaining informative and eye-opening. Although this film was insightful, I watched this Netflix series when it first came out, and it seemed that only my friends that were already aware of the issues of racism and were extremely against it were the ones watching the series. Did this TV series really reach the audiences it needed to?

Also, in this film, the party illustrates the common occurrence of white people romanticizing black culture without respecting it. White people often only recognize black culture when it is convenient for them – such as participating in black music, clothing, food, etc. When Coco states that the white people at the party don’t care about Harriet Tubman she is alluding to the problematic issue that these people weren’t hosting this party to respect the black culture, it was a mockery. The white population accepts the material aspects of the black culture with ease, but lack the recognition of the deeper history of the culture. They aren’t glorifying the culture out of appreciation and attempting to assimilate white culture with black culture to have a sense of pluralism. Instead,  the party is simply utilizing black culture for the attendee’s own benefit.

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One Comment

  1. Michael Childress Michael Childress

    your post made me think about cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation and how fine of a line it is between the two. obviously in this movie it was a display of cultural appropriation, but it does shed light on how difficult it is to find the correct way to appreciate different cultures and highlight their aspects without appropriating their aspects.

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