'Dear White People' Creators Talk About Race

[Scuba]

http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/10/187886/dear-white-people-creators-talk-about-race

The most racially charged movie in 25 years will be released in theaters around the same time a Ferguson grand jury is expected to announce its findings in the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Scheduled to open October 17, Dear White People culminates with the big screen’s most intense racial confrontation on a film set in contemporary America since Do the Right Thing. And police play a role in the clash as they did in Spike Lee’s 1989 drama.

Writer/director Justin Simien’s Dear White People has won Sundance and Palm Springs Film Festival awards and is spearheading the cinematic surge of black-themed films that propelled 12 Years a Slave to Best Picture, acting and writing Oscars last year. The film deals with race relations in today’s supposedly “post-racial” America.

Simien’s sophisticated satire takes place at Winchester University, a fictitious Ivy League school where only 2 percent of the student body is black.

Biracial Samantha White (Tessa Thompson) is a strident, conflicted leader. “Sam” is also a film student who parodies D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic The Birth of a Nation and DJ. She delivers caustic commentaries over campus airwaves, such as: “Dear White People, the amount of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two,” and, she adds tartly, drug dealers don’t count.

[merrily]

1. Can I just say that the term "racially charged" makes racism seem like not quite racism?

A racist remark or act or law or film may be blatantly racist or subtlely racist. However, the fact that racism is subtle does not mean it is not racist, only "racially charged," whatever the hell that "racially-charged" mean, apart from racism.

If you don't think a remark or a film is racist, don't hint that it is racist by using the term "racially charged." If you do think it's racist, don't wimp. Call it what it is. Racism does not deserve a euphemism or any other kind of soft-pedaling. (I have no idea what the term "soft pedaling" literally means, either, but I know what it is supposed to convey.)

ETA: I am using "you" generically, not to refer to the Op poster or to the writer of the article or to any particular individual.

Also, I looked up soft pedaling. Literally, it refers to the "soft" pedal of a piano. But, as I did know, it conveys playing down something, making it seem like something less significant than it is.

[heaven05]

2. Timely and important theme

hopefully it will help people to start talking about what and who americans(black and white) truly are represented by in 2014 in the halls of power(Supreme Court-Congress) and both major political Party's that have NOT much difference between them, it seems. Money is the only thing that causes movement in one and racist ideology in the other. You choose.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. +1

[lunasun]

4. Trailer

[Scuba]

5. Thanks for adding this!