Members of the Black Student Union is flabbergasted as they read the "African American" party invite (Code Red/Homegrown Pictures)

This provocative satirical drama, created by first-time feature film director Justin Simien, delivers a riveting jolt to modern-day race discourse that millennials have been craving. Poignant and funny, uncomfortable and cathartic, “Dear White People” doesn’t hit every note it could have, but it’s a fantastic film that you’ll be talking about for days. The main characters are fresh, complex and complicated representations of black people, but the film also takes no prisoners when tackling everyday microaggressions that occur in a so-called “colorblind society."

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The film begins with pastiche and vignettes, which is entertaining, but difficult to settle into at first. However, once the narrative smoothes out and the characters stop pontificating on the racial controversies that have already been beaten to death, the stars begin to shine in their roles. It’s understandable why Simien tried to cram so much into this one film, after all, when was the last time we saw one like it? Some would say we'd have to go all the way back to the glory days of Spike Lee. Some of the plot points promised early on in the film never come to fruition, but the characters carry the story scene by scene and the weight of their interactions and the depth of the intra-black and interracial politics will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

The most basic plot summary of this film is this: we follow the stories of four black students at a fictional Ivy League college called Winchester where racial tensions snap after a group of white students throw a disturbingly popular “African American” themed party, complete with blackface, grills, sagging pants, swinging gold chains, fake guns, giant afros and pimp cups. Yes, it is more painful to watch than it sounds (and these parties happen in real life too). But the shock value of this party is not the focus of the film, rather the stories of the four main characters—students grappling with different aspects of identity as “black faces in whites spaces”—are the heart of it.

Sam White (Tessa Thompson) appears on the scene like a new-wave militant. She’s the radio show host of Dear White People who feels pressured to amp up her personality into an Angela Davis-like figure for her fellow black students. But beneath her bravado and front, she has no true idea of who she is beyond her beliefs. She struggles with her half-black half-white identity and hides her relationship with a white teaching assistant, feeling like she has to “pick a side.”

She’s not the only one struggling. Troy (Brandon P Bells) is the legacy kid, the son of the Dean of Students at Winchester. Classically good-looking and always dressed in hip but conservative clothes, he says he wants to run for president one day all the while having his father’s potential disappointment loom over him. But is he shucking-and-jiving for others or going after what he wants? In the bathroom, he secretly smokes weed and writes jokes, trying to get on the staff of “Pastiche,” the prestigious, lampoon-esque student newspaper run by an all-white editorial staff.

Blue contact-wearing Colandrea “Coco” Connors (Teyonah Parris) hates the neighborhood she grew up in, disparages her own name as “ghetto” and wishes that she could make her blackness invisible, that she could be accepted by the white crowd. Wearing her insecurities like borrowed armor, she condescendingly tells Troy that she’s not really into black guys at the same party at which she's stung when two white guys overlook her for a white woman.

And last comes Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams), the gay sci-fi nerd and journalist who bounces from residency to residency, not sure where he belongs. He’s quiet, not that many people know his name and he lets his afro grow to monumental proportions, because he’s too afraid and alienated to ask one of the black students who cuts hair to give him a trim. 

"My film isn't about 'white racism' or racism at all,” said Simien in an interview with The Huffington Post. “My film is about identity. It's about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who that person understands themselves to truly be. All explored through the microcosm of a success oriented Ivy League college."

In a society in which there’s a clichéd pre-conceived checklist of what it means to be black or part of the “black community,” this movie is a deep, psychological breath of fresh air—while at the same time showing those not in "the know" just how cringe-worthy it is when someone sticks their hands deep in your hair unannounced or calls you “technically black.” Yikes. “Dear White People” doesn’t have all the answers—and that’s the point. The main characters have to decide on their own what it means to be black, or in other words, be themselves.

Contact Deputy Opinion Editor Corinne Gaston here; or follow her on Twitter.