First Impressions: Dear White People (Netflix)

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 George Orwell's Animal Farm on a campus - in a kinda, sorta, slightly stretched sort of way.

'Dear White People' is about racism in an elite Ivy League college, Winchester, that does the token lip-service to diversity, inclusion, pluralism, etc. It centers around a radio show called 'Dear White People' hosted by Samantha White. Sam, as she's called. is a biracial college student who calls out the intrinsic bias of her college mates by explaining acceptable and non-acceptable behavior towards Blacks. We see her journey navigating this petridish of prejudice with her friends, through her conflict of belittle entitled white male yet getting really close to one of them, not extending the same 'sisterhood' to her friend Colandrea for making decisions different from hers, and other teenage angst - the sort that comes from being 'woke'. But can any movement or ideology be completely inoculated against power dynamics amongst its own believers? 

No.

So we see the drama play out where people are so exhausted with just raging against the system that they start letting things slide, there is no unity, they themselves are criticized for what they stand against, etc. Overall I liked it but I did think that the writing was stronger in the first two episodes. The last episode did tackle a very interesting question of whether technology is really 'neutral'. If there is no Black representation amongst the VCs in Silicon Valley, can a start-up culture be tilted against a demographic? 

In India, there is such a furor against any kind of reservation - gender-based, caste-based, region-based, etc. We often question whether reservation dilutes meritocracy. Should people be included in groups only as token representation? How much is too much? If you do happen to be part of the entitled' group, how long should you go through life apologizing for your historical privilege? And is it fair that your voice be silenced then? 

This show is sufficiently far removed for many of us to reflect on the questions without getting triggered, I feel. I particularly did not like Sam's character. I loved Colandrea, though. For those who have seen 'Hazaaron Khwaishein aisi', Sam reminded me of Kay Kay Menon (although she wasn't as spineless as him) and Colandrea reminded me of Shiney Ahuja - a character who understands the real practicality of just how immensely the system is weighted against you So you join it and play it to your advantage. 

That seems to take the smarts and guts that matter.

Good watch. 




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