Dear White People marked Lionsgate’s second original series for Netflix (behind Orange is the New Black). The half-hour dramedy which premiered April 28th, 2017 and wrapped last year on its fourth season was adapted from creator Justin Simien’s debut indie film of the same name. Provocative, witty and entertaining, it was as timely then as it continues to be — delving into race relations (in the US, but really featuring global takeaways) through the lens of an age group looking to discover and define themselves—an age group rarely visited so extensively on the small screen.

The concept

Dear White People provides a social commentary that forces its audience to reflect inward—a favorite television trope of Simien’s—and investigate the universal truths of forging one’s own path through social, political, and self-destructive minefields. The show that centers around a group of diverse students of color at the fictional Winchester University starts in season one with the Ivy Leaguers facing the ugly truths about their not-so-post-racial culture, brought to a boiling point by a campus Blackface party. And that’s just the beginning.

The show’s entire run revolved around politics on every scale, both personal and on campus as a microcosm of America. It’s beautiful concept utilizes campus life where diverse young adults specifically come to learn about history and how to make the future better to discover who they are and what they believe in along the way. Dear White People examines police brutality, PTSD, sexual harassment, racism and the diversity within the Black community. At the same time, it examines the inner turmoil of simply being in your early-twenties in our world, trying to figure out life, love, sexuality and one’s entire future.

The structure

The characters’ futures play out in season four’s dueling storylines of present-day senior year and fifteen years down the line. Shot under pandemic conditions, Dear White People’s final season is even more impressive as the real-world context once again plays into the uncertainty of it all, this time being COVID-19. If anything, it offers the hopeful, slightly unsettling tone that the real ending is yet to be written.

Dear White People’s other notable structure was its propensity to concentrate on one character per episode, bringing the ensemble together for the finales. The show also featured a narrator for some time, voiced to perfection by Giancarlo Esposito.

Other notable names: Logan Browning took over from Dear White People (2014)’s Tessa Thompson (Creed, Thor: Ragnarok) as Samantha White, and Brandon P Bell, as Troy Fairbanks, was the only cast member from the film to reprise his role for the TV show. Yvette Lee Bowser of Living Single, Black-ish, and Run the World signed on by the second season as a showrunner and co-executive producer alongside Simien, who also directed the film and TV series.

That call for a Netflix boycott

The Dear White People  film was awarded the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, going on to become the third highest-grossing film to come out of that year’s festival run.  Interestingly, a politically driven campaign to boycott Netflix emerged based on the TV show’s trailer alone. Simien’s eloquent response to the protest according to IndieWire sums up the purpose and theme behind Dear White People:

“I’m not the first artist to use a misnomer as a title and I reject any notion of ‘causing a divide’ simply by stating that one exists, which is my role as an artist. To state what is. But if facts and common sense cannot wake us up from our delusions and distorted ways of seeing, what can? Stories. Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others. Our entire concept of reality is stories. So tell your story. Come out of the closet. Write your thesis. Make your film. But do it honestly. Tell the inconvenient truth. It is the only thing that has ever saved us. So while it was fun engaging the trolls but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The harder thing is to listen and present what is.”

While the boycott thankfully didn’t work, what it did do was serve to create marketing buzz, as well as prove one of the very points the show was trying to make.

In Retrospect

Simien created a social satire in practically every medium, from film and television to a companion “Guide to Inter-Racial Harmony in “Post-Racial” America” from Simon & Schuster, that will continue to inform and entertain on for as long as we need to hear its messages.

Dear White People is a solid dose of awareness that the conversation needs to keep happening. And through such pieces of art, we can start to learn and empathize, closing the gap that should’ve never happened in the first place.