“Dear White People. Making shows that fantasize America’s greatness if you still owned slaves is NOT sexy. It’s not ‘Alt-History.’ It’s Offensive.”

Rebecca High
Jul 22, 2017 · 8 min read

I can just hear Sam White’s signature cold open: her mordant diatribe against the latest in institutionalized racism: specifically, this week’s news that HBO has greenlit a series by two white males that postures America as if slavery had never ended. Whether this show will be set in modern times or, say, 1870, is as yet undisclosed. And since Sam’s radio show, Dear White People, is (unfortunately) both fictional and off-season, I’ll have to satisfy my need for her caustic wisdom by imagining how she’d respond to this.

Sam White in Dear White People

HBO’s latest announcement, Confederate, deserves criticism but I’ll try to be brief because I really just want to talk about Dear White People. The creators of that network’s hit show, Game of Thrones, are Mssrs. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (two white males) have created an alt-history series wherein the Confederate states successfully secede from the Union during the American Civil War, and slavery remains a national entity for the foreseeable future. (Full disclosure: buried under the Deadline and THR ledes there are photos of the two black executive producers/writers who will be working under the white guys to create this alt-history. The plot thickens! Oh to be a fly on the wall of the writers’ room where these four will create, inform, and develop Confederate).

But as the social media decriers have reminded us: the Confederate flag still waves proudly across the South. Statues of racist heroes are controversially still in place across city squares. Racism is rampant through the fabric of our society. Americans don’t need an “alt-history” to remind them just how close to reality the Confederacy and its symbolism of evil still is. And while no one can downplay the production value of GoT, the dragon-fantasy show in itself is controversial because of the way its creators have portrayed female characters, rape, and a lack of diversity. Writer Ira Madison III (@ira) tweeted: The writers of a fantasy show with no black people can’t wait to write a fantasy show where the black roles are…slaves.” Author Roxanne Gay (@rgay) minced no words either, posting: “It is exhausting to think of how many people at HBO said yes to letting two white men envision modern day slavery. And offensive.”

Jamal Richardson is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University who tweets @HoodAcademic, and yesterday he posited: “Quote this with other alternative histories we could make into TV shows instead of ANOTHER take on “WHAT IF THE CONFEDERATES/NAZIS WON!?!?!” (The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon Original alt-history show in which the Axis powers won WWII and Nazis take over the US, based on the novella by Philip K. Dick). Richardson retweeted his stellar responses for the duration of the evening: my favorite scenarios included “WHAT IF” renditions of: Columbus was turned away by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas; HIV was seriously addressed/eradicted in the 80s, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion ended successfully and changed the entire Civil War; King, Shabazz, and Evers had not been murdered; and WHAT IF THERE HAD NEVER BEEN A SLAVE TRADE AND AFRICA HAD NEVER BEEN COLONIZED?! So there you go, future filmmakers of all colors and backgrounds. We’ve merely scratched the surface of some solid alt-history fantasy ideas for your next HBO hit, courtesy of The Internets.

Dear White People, as much as we love fantasy and privileges afforded to us, some sensitivity is in order. Reimagining history can be educational and thoughtful: just one problem with Confederate is allowing men with questionably appropriate CVs like theirs to use the sugar-coated “alt-history” brand on something that carries so much willfull tragedy and relentless, ongoing controversy. It’s hard to present dystopia that feels like current reality (which is why I’m still having trouble finishing The Handmaid’s Tale).


And Dear White People, as much as it’s a bummer to admit it, we’ve got a lot to learn about how to handle our white privilege, and DWP sits us right down to start with the basics. This show is fresh and lush: not like the eponymous, independent feature film a few years ago. For some reason, that Dear White People was slow and confusing; it didn’t impress me even though I knew I should it allow it to. The new Netflix iteration is, however, entirely compelling. As Sam White points out to the posers: “Skin color is not a weapon. Listen to black people! Otherwise you can’t even pretend to be woke.” So we’ll start there.

Informational and substantive without being too kitschy, DWP is a fun show with interesting characters that don’t necessarily fall into black or university tropes that become so tiring in television, although there certainly is a familiarity in those college student insecurities. But they don’t fit stereotypes, and they’re all diverse: they don’t always agree with each other and they come from a plethora of backgrounds with myriad personalities and life goals. That’s what makes the show interesting and relatable, proving that even if you lump race into a box, the box doesn’t hold.

As NY Times reviewer James Poniewozik puts it: “Whiteness isn’t the show’s subject or object so much as it’s the social medium through which the characters have to wade.” Sam and Coco actually create the eponymous catchphrase as a way to bond over the ridiculousness — racially infused and otherwise — they encounter in their college experience. Eventually their different life approaches diverge when Sam, trying to revolutionize, and Coco, trying to rush a sorority, clash. Suddenly, important yet somewhat less tension-fused topics like natural hair and boys become deeper, more serious debates about reverse racism and light-skinned privilege. I adore the Sam-Coco alliance/axis because these are two strong characters using their strength in different ways, but evolving through their mistakes. “Sometimes being carefree and black is an act of revolution,” Sam says, and it’s true: even the black student house is divided, sometimes surprisingly, on race and politics, but their very existence on a college campus, is considered a resistance. They resist the norms to which we as viewers have been conditioned to seeing on TV, they subvert the racist structures of our society. These cliques both do and don’t fit the university stereotypes and are a well-written diversification of the definition of “black lives matter.” But Sam’s radio show brings the whole campus together as she denounces the manifestations of institutionalized racism. They don’t always agree with her, but they’re all listening.

TFW — Dear White People

Elevating race above classist stereotypes shouldn’t be jarring in American entertainment, but it is. I mean, this is very Hollywood-meets-Ivy League in which we typically only see white jerks from New York and Malibu languishing over incestuous relationships and hard drugs. (In the best of ways, I admit DWP reminds me of Gossip Girl if only because it fills my need of sartorial eye candy and youthful drama outside my life status, although Sam’s Dear White People show offers more social justice depth than even Kristen Bell’s nameless XOXO narrator or Blair Waldorf ever could).

And it’s not just Sam and Coco, but there’s a roster of characters here with depth, flaws, internal conflict, all of it. We find elements to root for in each, but as outsiders we also identify the inconsistencies, the insecurities “post-racial” ivory tower college life. I love the dynamic of the jock and the newspaper nerd teaming up (also, shoutout intrepid student journalism), and I love the elements of sexuality in very different forms that seep throughout from same-sex to even a little touch of that out-of-bounds teacher-student affair, (reminiscent of Riverdale albeit infinitely sexier). Reggie is a the firebrand arguably the most trope-y and under-developed character on the show. (He does, however, have a beautiful spoken-word piece that I’m linking here because, beautiful).

Then there’s that one supporting white character: “White Bae” Gabe (only one, thank goodness), whom Sam is dating on and off. He serves as a sometimes useful White Person vantage, although ultimately I think the show wastes too much time on him, but to his credit Gabe introduces that “I’m woke compared to most of my race but I’m still a blundering straight white male,” and things don’t necessarily have a happy ending for him and Sam. As annoying as it is, I think that’s an important perspective to portray when preaching to white people. I found that I could relate, somewhat, even while also totally sneering at him from my outside perspective.

The show is beautiful: the people are gorgeous, the set design is amazing, the lighting is stunning. Oh, and the soundtrack is lit, whether it’s the jams Sam spins on her radio show or the songs in the credits. I highly recommend the Spotify playlist, or you can find them on YouTube. It’s also fresh AF when it comes to cultural references: DeRay McKesson (❤). You Must Remember This Podcast. A hilarious parody of the show Scandal. There’s a couple self-conscious jokes about Obama, but the story also finds fresh ground to poke at, like white people impersonating slavery in dance interpretation (Sam: “Okay, you’ve had your 12 Minutes a Slave”).


There are a couple other topical issues I found interesting: the post-racist racism of things like lawn jockeys and black face, police brutality, stereotypes and assumption. When The Atlantic did their review of DWP, they asked an admirable roundup of black writers to comment. I tend to agree most with TeNehesi Coates: the others who thought it bordered on kitschy seemed to miss what I thought were pretty obvious self-deprecating moments of humor to help leaven the tone. DWP takes its message seriously enough to be flexible with it, but not so seriously that it can’t also appreciate that stereotypes work both ways.

I’d hoped we’d have dismantled the patriarchy and eliminated Robert E. Lee monuments all over America by 2017 but instead, our facade of social liberalism and progressivism continues to wallow in its isolationist racism and lack of diversity. The good news is that Netflix has renewed Dear White People for a second season: in a world where online streaming numbers aren’t public and there’s barely rhyme nor reason for why some shows stick around and why seemingly popular shows get the ax, we can thank our lucky stars and Black Jesus that dear white confederates will at least have to contend with woke black youth. And THEY’RE the real heroes.

Rebecca High

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can’t afford quarters for laundry but my favorite food is avo toast

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