"Can we talk about how Dear White People is #ConcernedStudent1950"?: **A Dear White People

**Warning there are some spoilers**

It was a Tuesday night; I was sitting on the couch watching episode 10 of Dear White People for the second time with some of my Mizzou activist friends when it clicked. “Wait, can we talk about how this show [DWP] is Concerned Student”, was the first thing that came out of my mouth as the credits started rolling and the show concluded. It all made sense, show creator Justin Simien must have been inspired by the events that occurred at the University of Missouri in the fall of 2015. Ok, maybe that's a reach because the original film Dear White People premiered in 2014, but there are so many similarities between Concerned Student 1950 and Dear White People that it would only make sense that the plot was influenced by campus protests held at Mizzou.

You may or may not remember seeing Mizzou in national headlines almost 2 years ago when graduate student Jonathan Butler went on a hunger strike and students camped out on Carnahan Quad until University of Missouri system president Tim Wolfe was fired or resigned. Tim Wolfe and other university administrators were oblivious, reactive, and careless when it came to racial incidents on campus such as student body president Payton Head being called a “nigger”, the Black Culture Center sign being vandalized, and a fecal swastika being drawn in the bathroom of a residence hall, just to name a few.

Students, faculty, staff, and community leaders of all backgrounds united together during Butler’s hunger strike and the camp demonstration with the goal to remove business minded Wolfe from office. So how does this compare to Dear White People? Similar to the racist incidents that occurred at Mizzou, members of Pastiche, a satirical magazine at Winchester University (a fictitious Ivy League school) were scrutinized after throwing an offensive black face party originally banned by the dean. Black students at Winchester become enraged and planned actions in response to this racist party just as Concerned Student members did.

As the series progresses, there are more commonalities with Mizzou and Concerned Student like Armstrong Parker, the all black residence hall. Though there may not be an “all black” residence hall on Mizzou’s campus, but the Gaines Oldham Black Culture Center like Armstrong Parker is the epicenter of black life on campus and a space where many black students hang out, chat, and watch Scandal on Thursdays (Defamation in Armstrong Parker, LOL). It’s also no surprise that Mizzou during the protests had a black student body president and Winchester elected Troy Fairbanks as student body president.

Fast forwarding to the climax of the series, racial tensions increased on Winchester’s campus. Reggie, one of the main characters, was held at gunpoint by campus police when a house party was being broken up. This incident is what sent Winchester into more of a frenzy than it already was. Marginalized students were even more angry and demanded for the firing of the police officer that held Reggie at gunpoint. Demanding the resignation or firing of someone...sounds all too familiar, huh. The plot thickens as Sam, Reggie, Joelle and other campus activist organize a protest outside a highly regimented town hall meeting the Winchester administration put on. The threat of the esteemed Hancock family not giving their $10 million donation to Winchester if Armstrong Parker was not disbanded closely resembles the “punishment” that the Missouri state legislators, and UM administrators have put UM system students on. Since the incidents in the fall of 2015, there have been budget cuts left and right to the University of Missouri-Columbia, caused by on the decrease in enrollment which was blamed on the protests that supposedly gave Mizzou a bad nationwide reputation.

Possibly the most poignant commonality between Dear White People and Concerned Student was the way in which student activist organized. Both groups were strategic and serious in how they organized protests and demonstrations. The activist in Dear White People weren’t just organizers though, they were a family, and that is something that I can personally relate to with Concerned Student. The people that protested, bonded at the camp site, and organized with me became like my family despite our differences and some will be lifelong friends. The movement on Mizzou’s campus did something so unique. It gathered people who may not typically hang out or even associate with each other for the greater cause of changing our campus environment.

While I overall enjoyed Dear White People, the representation of identities wasn’t the best. In the series I don’t remember seeing any plus size actors or even an extra. It was very “skinny centric”. So many queer representations in the media are often white gay men. Lionel’s character as a queer black man is written very well but in the future I’d like to see queer black women in the series. The character of Kenyan student Rashid is probably my second least favorite character. As the only African character in the show, he is pretty clueless to racism in America. He is frequently annoyed when the other characters discuss racism in the United States and portrays that because he’s African he doesn’t get it. Antiblackness is global though. Racism exists in Africa just as much as it does in the United States. Rashid may be a character used as a learning example for viewers to comprehend systematic racism but I don’t like that he is always the person to shut down revolutionary conversations.

Dear White People is a letter in the form of a Netflix show to white people, white American’s especially. This show is for the average white person to become socially conscious and is not for the already awakened to become more woke. Many of the social conversations on this show are recycled current social justice discourse. It wasn’t that informative in my perspective, but I am also pretty informed on topics of civil rights. Maybe I’m just thirsty to see Reggie and Troy on my screen, but I wish that the episodes in the future would be longer instead of 30 minutes. Watching Dear White People was a great beginning to my summer. It made me reminisce about the time I spent with my Concerned Student family, and most importantly highlighted campus activism. Campus activism is often forgotten in the history books. Dear White People portrayed a half way decent representation of what campus activism is really like, while at the same time being funny and accurate. Hopefully Netflix answers our collective prayers and renews the series for a season two! What did YOU like or not like about Dear White People?

#DearWhitePeople #ConcernedStudent1950 #Mizzou #UniversityofMissouri #Sam #Reggie #Joelle #Coco #Troy