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Post for 11/30

In the movie Dear White People, there is an obvious problem of black against white. A lot of the arguments and issues they have through the movie always seem to come back to it being a race issue. While race is definitely a factor, so is privilege. The way it is portrayed, the black students seem to have a problem with everything and the white students don’t think there is much of a problem at all. A lot of it has to do with privilege. The privileged, who would be the white students don’t think it is that big of deal and don’t see the issues having anything to do with race. The is symbolic of the issue of privilege in the first place. Those who are privileged tend not to notice it and recognize that they benefit from it. In this case, many of the students benefit off of white privilege. However, there are examples that there isn’t just white privilege, there is class privilege as well. The characters Coco and Troy are black and come from families with money. In some cases, they don’t think the issues are about black and white because they benefit from the privilege of coming from money. Their privilege blinds them from seeing that race is as important of a factor as many of the black students argue it to be.

The stereotypes that are portrayed are obviously very dramatic and excessive. Even though the characters are doing it on purpose, we still relate to it in some way because they are based on stereotypes that exist in our culture. By portraying the stereotypes this way, it works as a mockery of them to show how ridiculous they are. In the introduction of the movie, the screen showed different groups of people and the groups in which they were associated with. Throughout the movie, you see that almost everyone belongs to a group of some sort. In the beginning, the character Lionel didn’t have any organization to claim and that presented a problem to him. The way that people were so strict to stick by what was expected of them or the group in which they were affiliated with made me think of the song Stick to the Status Quo in High School Musical. In that movie it was about social groups and not race, but it still applies. 

Each group had expectations of how they expected each other group to be, and that was their downfall. They couldn’t get over their assumptions of each other and they couldn’t communicate because of it. In real life it isn’t as obvious as it is portrayed to be, but this problem still exists, even if we may not realize it on a subconscious level.

 

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One Comment

  1. Madeline Orr Madeline Orr

    I also thought that it was interesting to see the different types of privilege present in the film. There is privilege among the white students who don’t see the issues going on. There also is class privilege where money and access to wealth also prevents people from seeing the racism on the campus. I think it is important to show that different characters of different races don’t always think and act the same way. The expectations of how people should act made it impossible for them to cooperate or to see how each person truly is.

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