"Dear White People": Race-Based Comedy on Campus

by Jonathan Kiefer An exasperated, broken-hearted comedy, which is the best kind, writer-director Justin Simien's feature debut begs to differ with the status quo of allegedly post-racial American college life. At a fictional campus where race-related power struggles are deeply entrenched, the public conversation escalates from snappy, archly articulate interpersonal debates to appalling frat-party racism and consequent violence -- which, as end-credits headline inserts remind us, is depressingl...