Dear White People, hope you watch this | Netflix Original Series

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What to watch?
What is Guilt-free, humorous, and light?
Dear white people.

You can even self-brag later that you learned something new from this binge-watch. It was not a waste of time. You are now more equipped to address cultural issues and crack appropriate jokes. 

If you think you are not racist and you know everything about it, watch them prove you wrong on so many levels.
That sudden reluctance in your head, like stones rocking inside your head or you feel like a block that makes you somehow unable to comprehend something, which creates that frown on your forehead, and all this unknowingly, this my friend is what happens when you behave like you are something but your body tells otherwise.
So, if even once you felt this annoyance whenever a conflict of opinion, logic or any rational argument(according to you) popped up in this series, then you still have a lot to learn.

Logan Browning, who played the character Samantha White, had a conversation with The vanity fair. A little excerpt from that post – ‘…“I used to accept a lot of things without questioning them, and Sam has made me question and act more,” Browning told Harper’s Bazaar in September, explaining how, even at 32, she absorbed lessons from the younger character…’ 

Enlightening with a blend of humor & wit.

Available on Netflix, It’s a comedy-drama satire.

Episode 4 & 5 of the Vol. 1 (i.e, 1st season) pretty much sums every problem surrounding this issue among the modern so-called ‘woke’ crowd.
It gives the right insight into how both sides perceive things, and why despite so many altercations and evidence, it’s still not a sensitive issue for many as they still see some terms as just a word, they don’t see the relevance it had.

From a Buzzfeed article by Sylvia Obell,

‘….The familiarity of the moments that follow the officer drawing his gun on Reggie only echoes Richardson’s and Simien’s points. Viewers see what plays out on the news and, for some audience members, in real life: Everyone in the crowd freezes; some cry; more plead with the officer to stop and with the black man in front of the gun to just do whatever he’s being asked to do, while others pull out their cell phones and begin to film videos that could go viral if the situation turns fatal.

Meanwhile, Reggie goes through the instructions black boys are taught from the moment they’re old enough to be seen as threatening: He puts his hands in the air and announces his movements as he slowly reaches back to his wallet, because any sudden shift could end his life, just like it did Tamir Rice’s and Mike Brown’s.
On Dear White People, Reggie Green doesn’t become a hashtag, but everyone in the room — and everyone watching at home — is once again made painfully aware of how easy it is for a black person to become one.
“We’re in an era where people confuse bigotry and prejudice with racism,” said Simien. “They’re different things. The reason it’s important to say that and call that out is because people who are oppressed by racism die. It’s fatal to be black. That is the reality of our country.”
The episode ends with the most harrowing (but also gorgeous) shot of Reggie at the foot of his door crying, while Sam (Logan Browning) knocks on the other side, trying to get him to open up, both literally and figuratively. The camera zooms in slowly until Reggie makes eye contact with it, breaking the fourth wall and driving home the point that fiction this is not. That’s because Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning Moonlight director and master of an emotional close-up, helmed the episode…..’ (read more)

Every season is unique and the series doesn’t get monotonous.

What do I like about the show?
The way it has somehow been able to include every set of characters there is from the real world. There’s a little bit of everyone –

• The leaders and doers, who take actions all the while putting their personal dreams and life at stake, measuring their every action with their cause.
  
• The ‘What difference does it make’ folk, who have witnessed firsthand accounts of personal loss and see no use in doing anything about it through protests at a mere college. They believe in becoming part of the system and slowly bring change from within the system.
  (Although, what they seem to forget is to get them into the system took protests like these to make a difference. )
  
• The forced leaders, who take actions to satisfy their parents’ experience.
  
• The Ignorant, who blurt out points against the issues, without ever facing the real bitter end of the stick. They are willing to accept their privilege honors on the face but don’t register it internally.
  They hate being called ‘racist’.

• The ‘woke’ political society, administration, Investors.
  Those who say they condemn it on every occasion of a cultural altercation, communal violence or racial conflicts. Then they take ‘hollow actions’ to back this condemn statement.
  
  For instance in this series, after a College security guard pulls out a gun at a campus house party to command a black student to give his ID, even though all the students shout out that he is a student there, the administration opened a town hall to address any grievances from the conflict and gave the student a mandatory therapy session, with a white doctor, to cover their tracks in case he attempts suicide. While the college guards still remained armed and that particular officer had no action taken against him (later fired, which he accepted happily stating that he had been appointed in the State Police [ go figure] ).

I am not sure if I felt quite gripped to this show because of the show itself or because I watched it right after coming from a mystery/thriller drama binge watch of two series – Marcella & The Stranger.
It felt like a breather after those two intense series.
DWP is a good watch, it has all the right elements – story, dialogues, good humor and a fabulous cast, who I guarantee will become part of your universe.
It helped me cover two points – learn something new; Watch a new show.

‘Woke or not’ , ‘Rose umbrella’, ‘The new Green Book’ are a bunch of progressive and incredible ideas. Their parallel run along with the story gives it an edge and keeps it all the more interesting.

This enforces my own subconscious question of what in the H education did I go through? Because from the looks of it, I had an experience nowhere near this. Of so many college & high-school shows, my education feels closer to their High-school level, if you ignore their actual practical projects in wood class, home-science, film or radio class (whatever they call that). I don’t have some of these even in our Colleges here. 

Created by Justin Simien.
It stars –
Logan Browning (Samantha White), Brandon P. Bell (Troy Fairbanks Bell), DeRon Horton (Lionel Higgins), Antoinette Robertson (Colandrea “Coco” Conners), John Patrick Amedori (Gabe Mitchell), Ashley Blaine Featherson (Joelle Brooks), Marque Richardson (Reggie Green), Jemar Michael (Al Lucas), Courtney Sauls (Brooke).

Favorite Scenes :

Open-Mic Poem read by Reggie Green :

‘….A bullet that held me at bay
A bullet that can puncture my skin
take all my dreams away
A bullet that can silence
the words I speak to my mother
just because I’m
other
A bullet – held me captive
gun in my face
your hate misplaced
White skin, light skin
but for me not the
right skin

Judging me with no crime committed
reckless trigger finger itching to
prove your worth by disproving mine
My life in your hands
My life on the line
Fred Hampton
Tamir Rice. Rekia Boyd,
Reggie Green? …..’

The End, when it ends with a song :

Together All the way.

‘….but we don’t have to worry,
we don’t have to wonder,
we don’t have to guess who’s by our side,
Together all the way,
together we will stay,
none can separate us from one another
Together all the way….’