AMY GOODMAN: A new film tackling racial politics in contemporary America is getting a major Hollywood break. The film, Dear White People, took the Sundance Film Festival by storm earlier this year, winning U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent. Now, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions have acquired rights to the film, pretty much guaranteeing a wide U.S. and Canadian distribution. Dear White People examines race relations through comedy and satire. While it elicits many laughs from the audience, at its core, it’s a serious film. The film follows a group of black students at a fictional, predominantly white, Ivy League school called Winchester University. One of the main characters, Sam, hosts a radio show on campus called Dear White People, where she confronts the racist stereotypes and dilemmas faced by students of color. Racial tensions on campus come to a head when a group of mostly white students throw an African-American-themed party wearing blackface and using watermelons and fake guns as props. The concept is not all that far-fetched. Just as the film was premiering at Sundance, a fraternity at Arizona State University decided to mark Martin Luther King Day by holding a, quote, MLK Black Party where white partygoers donned basketball jersies, flashed gang signs and drank from cups made of watermelons. When posting photos of the event to social media, they used hashtags like hood, blackout for MLK, my boy martin and kill em. More recently, three freshmen were expelled from their fraternity at University of Mississippi, popularly known as Ole Miss, for hanging a noose and plastering a flag bearing the Confederate symbol on a statue of James Meredith, a civil rights hero who was the first African American to attend the university. The fraternity was also suspended after the incident, which took place in February during Black History Month. Further north, at one of the world’s top universities, students of color say they’re tired of people suggesting they don’t belong. Black students at Harvard recently began a photo montage campaign called I, Too, Am Harvard that went viral. In it, students hold signs that say things like Having an opinion does not make me an Angry Black Woman and No, I will not teach you how to twerk. A Harvard student named Ahsante Bean made this promo video for the campaign.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:07:26 +0000
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