Individuality in Dear White People

One of the most interesting and innovative aspects of Dear White People, among films that tackle issues of race, is the emphasis it places on individuality.  I think that this is especially well done because it is a film about college students, who really are finding out who they really are at this stage in their lives.  In a way, it would have been a mistake to not place this individual emphasis on a film about college campuses.

The multi-protagonist take on the plot really linked this search for individual identity with the black struggle of having a label and second identity pressed upon you.  It encouraged the idea that anyone, regardless of shade or color, can be their own unique individual with their own niche in society, and gave four very different examples of students who manage to do just that.

This focus on the individual is what made this movie, at least for me, different from other films that call race and racial tensions into questions.  Do The Right Thing, for example, is a well-known Spike Lee movie that follows the buildup towards a race riot in the middle of summer in New York.  While the characters of Do The Right Thing are also individuals and archetypes of unique people in their own sense, there is no sense of growing into those individual personalities.  And while this does not detract from Do The Right Thing, it lends an added layer of meaning to Dear White People that humanizes the characters and modernizes the film.

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