The plot is based on four black students that attend Ivy League College. There they see a black-face party held by white students. So Samantha White gets an idea and starts her radio show as “Dear White People”.
It is smart, funny and provocative without being rude, even if some of the actual events and behaviours depicted are shocking. The film itself is not the shocker, the things it says about how we see each other is the embarrassment.
The pitch on Dear White People is that it's "Do the Right Thing for the Obama generation," which is both an oversell and a disservice to Justin Simien's witty satire about race relations on a fictional Ivy League campus.
Dear White People offers up some droll and relevant observations on the commodification of race and ensures that Justin Simien is a filmmaker to watch.
The best moments get to the heart of Simien's thesis that what is supposed to be post-racial America isn't all that much different from what came before.