YESTERDAY a super-short trailer for upcoming series Dear White People announced its April 28 release date, and simultaneously pissed off a bunch of the alt-right. (I know, shocking.) Some of them, including former BuzzFeed writer and current Twitter abuser Tim Treadstone (aka @BakedAlaska), demanded a boycott of Netflix, calling the show “anti-white.” Funnily enough, when Treadstone posted the screengrab from his Netflix cancellation, he also revealed his personal email address. This resulted in countless Twitter users signing him up for about 7,000 different mailing lists as punishment for his ignorance. Conspiracy theorist Treadstone also said the show “promotes white genocide.”
Really, Tim? You got all that from this?
The 30-second “controversial” trailer features black protagonist and college radio host Samantha White listing some acceptable Halloween costumes (pirates, slutty nurses, etc.), and making clear what’s not acceptable to dress up as: “ME.”
Then we see images of something we’ve seen way too often and wayyyy too recently in real life: white people in blackface.
The Netflix series will take after Justin Simien’s 2014 satirical drama of the same name, which centers on the perspectives of black students at a predominantly white Ivy-esque college. Simien responded to the outrage on Facebook:
“When the first trailer for the film dropped, I’ll admit the deluge of claims that I was a reverse racist and a ‘piece of shit monkey that should shut up and go back to Africa’ really hurt. But now, I feel strangely encouraged. To see the sheer threat that people feel over a date announcement video featuring a woman of color (politely) asking not to be mocked makes it so clear why I made this show.”
While I wasn’t aware of the 2016 announcement to create the show, I was happy to learn it’s changing format since I found the movie to be somewhat of a disappointment. Here’s to hoping that it works better as a TV show so we can add it to our list of fantastic, smart and hilarious black stories on TV!
