Dear Me

Other than having a clever title, Dear White People does a commendable job of addressing many of the intricate layers of racism. Rather than blatantly addressing the most well established stereotypes, this film highlights the how living in a society that puts so much emphasis on ethnicity and race affects the behavior of the people within the society. Throughout the film, several characters portrayed different areas of the intertwined racial, social, and sexual spectrums. The story of Troy most clearly illustrated the conflict between racial identity and social status.

Troy was the perfect image of the all american man. In the beginning of the film he was the president of his house at a prestigious university. He was athletic, fit, and intelligent. Troy dressed very well and spoke to crowds with ease and comfort. He possessed many of the traits people desire and value in America's society. However, Troy’s confidence was later revealed to be a mask worn over the insecurity instilled in him by his father, the Dean of Students at the university. Troy’s father had apparently been critiquing him his entire life to position him at superior social status. Troy’s father did this to compensate for the way he had been slighted in his career and life, solely for being a black male. His father even went as far as to verbally barade Troy for succumbing to racial stereotypes in response to finding out that Troy regularly smoked weed in his bathroom. In reality, Troy wasn’t smoking weed, because he was black. He was smoking weed, because he was stressed out having to constantly serve as his father’s pawn in a game of social chess, where his father’s approval was more elusive than his father’s victory.

Troy and his father’s entire relationship, the stress it festered, and its miscommunication stemmed from an attempt to combat racial prejudices and injustice. Dear White People was successful in revealing the layers of racial prejudice that reside under the surface of racism. Also being a modern film, it was good about highlighting the more prevalent racial damage in today’s world. Although they are no longer being sent to the back of restaurant to eat their food behind the kitchen, people of African American descent are still affected by racial prejudices, as they are left to climb the social ladder of a society that branched from a racist era, where they were considered to be inferior to white people.