Race ‘riot’
Satirical film takes on black-white issues
The party invitation asks guests to “liberate their inner Negro.” Most of the attendees are white and dressed up like their favorite black rappers, basketball players and yes, the President of the United States. If that sounds offensive, it’s meant to be— welcome to the plot of the satirical drama “Dear White
People,” in theaters Friday.
The film follows four black students at a fictional Ivy League campus
, where racial tensions have reached a boiling point over the part
y. But for star Tyler James Williams, his biggest problem was his hair
.The actor/rapper, 22, says
he wishes he had the script earlier so he would have had time to grow out his character’s Afro. He instead had to sport an
uncomfortable weave that he yanked out of his hair one morning. “Then a big patch
was missing, so a wig got involved,” Williams tells The News. “It was a low point in myl ife.”
Addressing the film’s race themes, Williams —who will star
on the upcoming season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” — predicts that eventually
there will be no race. Instead, “Everyone
will be a shade of khaki.”
“That is the core of the post-racial era,” adds Williams, “that you’re not supposed to fit into
one category. We are heading there, but not
there yet. We’re yelling a teach other right
now about race. What this movie will do is
ach bring it down so we can talk to e other, with a little bit of humor.”
Tessa Thompson (“Veronica Mars,” “For Colored Girls”) stars as Samantha White, a black student who hosts the school’s radio show. “
Dear white people,” Samantha
announces, “the minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised to two.” And it’s no coincidence Samantha’s last name is White. There are a lot of films that have “only one half-bake dideaspread over the course of two hours,”
says Thompson, 31. “‘Dear White People’ does the exact opposite.”
Indeed, there are a lot of subplots. The black student governmentle
ader is dating a white girl, raising
eyebrows from other students.
A reality TV producer stalks the campus. And
a student journalist keeps getting lockedout by his roommates. Writer/director Justin Simien,
31, based the first draft of his script
onhis own college years. “There is no one black experience
in America, which is a myth
black people struggle with,” Simien says. “We
tend to be put in boxes that are very uncomfortable, and we have to navigate
our way out. “The idea that we are now in
some kind of post-racial bubble
has officially been blown to smithereens,” adds Simien. “But racism isn’t the focus of this movie. It’s identity.”