Justin Simien’s 2014 movie Dear White People was about the politics, activism, and social scene at Winchester, a racially divided Ivy League college. In the movie version of DWP, everything was rushed—the story and issues were too big to cram into 100 minutes.
But as I’d hoped, the premise works much better on TV. The Black Caucus (AKA the black clubs on campus) meets up regularly to talk smack and discuss their fellow students’ troubling racism. And when it gets to be too much, the students get together to “hate watch” their favorite drama, Defamation, a ridiculous parody of Scandal. Simien’s new Dear White People Netflix series allows for thorough character development, giving each character their own episode.
There’s the freedom-fighting Sam (Logan Browning), who hosts the radical DWP campus radio show and whose image is tarnished when her peers find out she’s dating hipster dude Gabe (John Patrick Amedori)—a sweet and sexy white Jesus type. There’s the seemingly perfect Troy (Brandon P. Bell), and student-journalist Lionel (DeRon Horton), who’s learning to accept his apparent homosexuality. And there’s Coco (Antoinette Robertson), who learned to assimilate from childhood, “managing” her Blackness.