Dear White People takes place at a fictional Ivy-League university, and focuses mainly on four charaters: student activist Sam White (Tessa Thompson) who has a controversial radio show called “Dear White People”, Troy Fairbanks (Brandon P. Bell), whose father is the Dean of the University, Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams) who is an awkward uncomfortable budding writer, and Colandrea “Coco” Conners (Teyoneh Parris), perhaps the most ambitious of the bunch.
The film brings up a lot of tough issues about race relations in the United States, including intra-racial tension that exists among the black student body at the school, but doesn't pretend to have the answers. That being said some basic story points we also presented and then overlooked, which left me a little confused about the plot of the movie. I found that the film tried to pack too many issues and questions into such a short time frame and thus came out a little sloppy
At a very basic level I really enjoyed watching a film that didn't have an all-white cast. As a resident of cities for the past ten years of my life, I'm tired of seeing movies that only have white people in them, as that is simply not an accurate reflection of reality. All of the acting the film was top notch. It's not the best film about race relations that I've ever seen, but it's also not the worst, and it's definitely worth seeing.