“Dear White People” is the name of Justin Simien’s first feature film, and I’ll say right away that it is as smart and fearless a debut as I have seen from an American filmmaker in quite some time: knowing but not snarky, self-aware but not solipsistic, open to influence and confident in its own originality. It’s a clever campus comedy that juggles a handful of hot potatoes — race, sex, privilege, power — with elegant agility and only an occasional fumble. You want to see this movie, and you will want to talk about it afterward, even if the conversation feels a little awkward. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong. There is great enjoyment to be found here, and very little comfort.

“Dear White People” is also the title of a series of campus radio broadcasts and viral Internet videos concocted by one of the movie’s major characters, a college student named Samantha White, played with heartbreaking poise by Tessa Thompson. Sam, as she is called, uses “Dear White People” to call out the hypocrisies, blind spots and micro-aggressions that African-Americans experience in their daily encounters with well-meaning Caucasians. Such people, including many of her fellow undergraduates at the Ivier-than-Ivy League Winchester University, make up a big part of Sam’s fan base. This is less because they want to subject themselves to her scolding than because they crave reassurance that they don’t really need it. The eagerness of some whites to prove that they “get it” on matters of race — their clumsy appropriations of African-American idioms and pop-cultural forms — is one of the targets of Sam’s critique and Mr. Simien’s satire.