Why did I pay to see Dear White People in the theaters? First time directors, especially black gay ones, are a rare treat and probably need as much financial support at the box office as they can get, but add the intriguing element of a movie set at a fictional Ivy League university, I could not resist. I loved the trailers. Some people have compared Dear White People to Spike Lee’s School Daze and John Singleton’s Higher Learning. I actually didn’t like either of those movies because they tried to deal with every hot button topic faced by students whereas Dear White People is focused predominantly on race-perhaps uncomfortably so even for this biracial black Harvard alum. Dear White People addresses how race can act as a substitute/obstacle for students trying to find out who they really are at the very time when they are supposed to be discovering themselves. The worst part is that just when everyone is on the verge of thinking maybe it is time to drop racial politics, the achievement carrot race and cliques to further explore their geeky or artsy fartsy sides, they can’t because racism won’t let them. I heard one reviewer saying that the denouement seemed contrived, but the closing credits show that it is an unfortunate reality that racism is a virus that always seems to have an outbreak and not even an elite university is immune where racism is usually subtle. It is marketed as a comedy, but the unrelenting intensity makes the laughs bittersweet. Dear White People isn’t a perfect movie. There are some pacing issues, unanswered questions and intentional character tropes that are leaned on hard, but when unsympathetic characters are still sympathetic, someone is doing something right. Dear White People beats Singleton and Lee by casting lesser known actors who manage to elevate the material, including Tyler James Williams, who is best known from Everybody Hates Chris. God bless Dennis Haysbert for taking a risk on this project. After I saw Dear White People, I realized that it has an additional obstacle besides Dear White People’s expected audience demographic, produced as an independent film and does not comfortably fit a genre: the title. For people who don’t know the premise, they think it is a letter. Expect awkward glances. Oh well. Give it a shot. Expect to be uncomfortable by the unrelenting intensity, but at least it isn’t something you see every day.