In 2014, I told my dad I wanted him to go to the movies with me. He asked me, "What do you want to see?"

"Dear White People."

If you just rolled your eyes or thought, "how offensive," you need to continue reading.

"Dear White People" deals with race relations in the United States and in particular the actions and relationships between college students on a perceived Ivy League college campus. In particular, this college is a PWI (Predominately White Institution). I won't summarize the entirety of the plot but here's the most important detail to know: it's not a movie that is racist against white people.

Which now leads me to the handful of reactions over the newly released trailer for the Netflix series based on the 2014 film also entitled Dear White People. Thousands are boycotting Netflix and cancelling subscriptions over ideas that the series is promoting racism towards white people. According to Rolling Stone, a former BuzzFeed contributor who is now known as a prominent social media voice in the alt-right movement tweeted: Netflix announced a new anti-white show that promotes white genocide.

Here's the trailer:

Let me know if it promotes the mass killing of an entire group of people.

Hint: It doesn't.

As an avid fan of the film that made way for now coming series, I benefited greatly from watching a movie that told the reality of our culture today. Both the film and the show's Wikipedia pages label it as a satire. The definition of satire is:

"Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society."

If the clear blue message needs to be painfully delivered, so be it. That's one of the great things about satire. In a culture, country and world where race is a difficult and uneasy subject to discuss, productions like these are important. It not only shows what the experience can be but can point out what change needs to be made. I strongly believe that the reaction has been strong (200k dislikes on YouTube and counting) in a large part because of the title. It zeroes in and calls out a particular group and in this case, the majority.

And they don't like it. But to say it promotes white genocide and racism against a group of people who benefit from the system of race itself is not only ridiculous but dangerous.

It is dangerous because it blatantly ignores the problem at hand and the intended reasoning why the show was created. Writer Justin Simien picked up on the social issue of racial transgressions and decided to write a whole medium about it, giving it national attention. The reaction to the show is very similar to the film and Simien sees it as positive because it gives it more attention and may lead to more people clicking on it and watching it. Bad press can also be good press.

I applaud Netflix for taking it on and showing it to the world.

Now more than ever, we may need a show like DWP to put us in place and start conversations we should have had years ago.