Last December, MTV News released a short, contentious video centered around things that the network thought white men, as a group, could improve on. This video, naturally, struck a chord with many viewers who quickly deemed the video to be racist and hateful. This video raised such a fever pitch across the entire internet that MTV actually removed the video from YouTube twice, seemingly in an attempt to avoid the impending PR trainwreck that was soon to come.
Today, the video isn’t on MTV’s channel, though uploads of it do still exist. The reception to this video was truly mainstream, calling it out for the truly racist and sloppy message it put into the world.
Despite all this, Netflix released a short trailer for a series they have in the works with a similar title, Dear White People. The trailer was uploaded four days ago at the time of writing and well over 300K dislikes, compared to a meager 40K likes, all of which were accumulated through 3 million views.
If you were to ask one of the many detractors of this upcoming show, they’d likely say something to the effect of the show being racially insensitive towards white people, or that the show is promoting a white genocide of all things. One of these individuals would likely say something along the lines of Netflix not learning the lessons that the ill-fated MTV News video taught us.
Among this theoretical group of people, the most notable common thread that links all of them is the fact that none of them have seen the show. In fact, nobody has, it hasn’t even been released yet.
What has been released was the indie film the show appears to be based on. This film was released in 2014 and received widespread critical acclaim for asking the audience tough questions about how our current “post-racial” society operates. What seems to be the case is that the film is not only critical of what goes on in the white community, but also the black community as well as how these two groups interact with one another.
To drastically over-simplify, the film seems to be trying to take a fair and honest look at the reasons for the current racial divide we see in America today. However, there is some reasonable apprehension to giving the show a pass until it is eventually released. The head writer of the show seems to be perpetuating the same bogus racial divide that the show he’s working for seems to want to do away with.
However, this show will likely not be malicious in nature, as the show’s creator Justin Simien seems to be sticking to the ideological neutral tone of the original movie. That said, the outrage surrounding this show is not completely unbelievable, as the title of the show is almost on par with Buzzfeed clickbaiting. It is very possible that this was a calculated move on the part of the show’s creators.
I’m ultimately looking forward to this show, I do feel as though it has the potential to add to the current conversation being had in the contemporary discourse about race and racial relations. This show is certainly not something worth tearing up your Netflix subscription over.
