Dear fellow white people, Netflix’s Dear White People is a must-watch series that both entertains and educates, despite its seemingly confrontational title.

Dear White People follows the lives of several black students at the canonically Ivy League Winchester University as they deal with the racism rampant across their campus. Their issues only increase after the university’s satirical magazine hosts a blackface party.

The show has been the subject of controversy since before it was released. Whenever the first trailer for Dear White People was released in late April, the Internet was filled with both excitement and anger. Many believed that the show’s title was antagonistic towards white people.

“Can you imagine the outrage if there was a show called ‘Dear Black People?,’” Twitter user @brandongroeny tweeted on April 30th, days after the release of the trailer. “Cities would burn. The anti-white rhetoric needs to stop.”

Other users claimed that they had cancelled their Netflix subscriptions promptly after the show’s announcement.

“I dropped @netflix like a hot potato when it was first announced,” said Twitter user @iammindy1 in a reply to @brandongroeny’s Tweet.

If a watcher chooses to see past the controversial title for the show, however, they will find a nuanced story about society’s many flaws, as well as issues found within the very movements that seek to correct these flaws.

Each episode of the series focuses on the life of one black student just before, during, and after the blackface party. Sam, the outspoken leader of the school’s civil rights movement , attempts to cover up two secrets: her white boyfriend, out of fear that she might be seen as betraying her black friends for dating someone of a different race; and exactly why she was at the blackface party, filming rather than ranting and participating it its shutdown.

Lionel, the cub reporter that learned about the blackface party and led a group of black activists to it to shut it down, also learns that he is gay after discovering he has a crush on his roommate, class president and dean’s son Troy. Troy himself has his fair share of secrets and struggles as well: he called the police to the blackface party to assist in the shutdown, and the fact that he has different aspirations than what his father, the dean, wants for him.

Coco, a black woman with mostly white friends, and who attended the blackface party with those friends, reflects on her past and why she lives the life she currently does.

The show is also incredibly well acted and well written. DeRon Horton is extremely convincing as the quiet rebel Lionel, and Logan Browning’s Sam is still likeable even after she makes a major mistake halfway through the series. Many shows with an ensemble cast have one unlikeable character and one seemingly perfect character, but all of the major characters in Dear White People have realistic character flaws but are still easy to care about.

The events that happen in the show are also incredibly realistic and seem like stories right out of the morning news: a student magazine hosts a blackface party at an Ivy League school, a college student is held at gunpoint after trying to defend himself in a fight. Nothing in the series is glamorized or sensationalized; instead, cold hard truth radiates through the series despite its fictional characters and setting.

This series not only shows the flaws within American society, especially its historically awful treatment of black people, but also issues that activists themselves face whenever they take on a holier-than-thou attitude. This idea that all activists must be the same way results in everyone losing a part of themselves: whether it be hiding who they love like Lionel and Sam, or hiding who they are like Coco and Troy.

Disclaimer: Articles designated as “Editorial” represent the views and opinions of the author, not the 2016-2017 Periscope staff, CHS Administration, or the CHS student body.