Dear White People
The viewing of Dear White people and the subsequent discussion with Justin Simien was incredibly enlightening. What stuck out to me the most was this idea that the director brought up about if you aren’t comfortable saying the word black, you aren’t comfortable talking about race. I thought this was an interesting idea when I grew up in a world pretty obsessed with political correctness. I’m still having trouble trying to understand not only how I feel about the issues brought up on Wednesday, but how I want to talk about them. Even now, I find myself censoring this blog post at the risk of crossing the boundaries of what I’m exactly I’m allowed to say or talk about as someone who is white. I think that is the struggle that will persist throughout the rest of my life. However, I think what Justin Simien was trying to say is that because I struggle with talking about race without being offensive, it’s impossible to say we live in a post racial society. I don’t believe that we do either and I want to be comfortable talking about race, but I also don’t want to offend anyone. It was a through provoking discussion that really made me reexamine my own views and how I feel about certain things. One certainty is that at least I will try to figure out how to have a meaningful discussion.
I would agree that we definitely don’t live in a post racial society, but I think that as a whole our society has definitely progressed a decent amount over the years. The fact that the movie Dear White People was even produced is a huge step let alone the fact that it won a Sundance Film award. However, there is still an elephant in the room when the topic of race is brought up and there are people of different races present.