Green: While I wouldn’t necessarily say I connected to any of the characters in the show, I did attend a PWI (Ohio University) at a time when issues of race and brutality against black people were at the forefront of discussion after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown. Factions of students dealt with those tensions in different ways, and I think the rift between Sam, an agitator, and Troy, the obedient son of the dean, was somewhat a true reflection of how multiple approaches to talking about race and flare-ups on campuses play out in real life.

White: As someone who also went to a PWI (Columbia), I get that the perception of the black student body at PWIs might align closely with what’s presented in Dear White People. In reality I think the black students who wind up going to PWIs are incredibly varied, just like the black students who go to HBCUs. That’s true not just in background, but also in views on racial issues that arise, be they external (like those Adrienne mentioned) or internal campus relations (the main kind the show deals with).

The presumption of bougieness is actually why I found the Coco-Sam dynamic to be so interesting. Of course there are black kids who grew up in nice neighborhoods with lots of privilege. But there are many black kids at these very affluent institutions who are certainly not from affluent backgrounds, who are there in hopes that their four years will give them access to a better life. I also think that black kids who go to PWIs have the additional task of trying to navigate the differences within the black community, while coping with the realities of being black in America, while also trying to find a place at elite, white institutions that have histories of being inaccessible, hostile, and discriminatory. I think that can be a complex space to navigate, especially for young adults who are still trying to figure out where they stand absent parental influence.

Newkirk: I thought the show’s attention to detail helped illustrate the students’ efforts at navigating those complex spaces, but it takes an eye and familiarity to make sense of those details. The little things like Troy and Coco’s conservative-leaning Congress of Racial Equality are hilarious if you know the history behind the real-life CORE, and its transformation from a mainstream civil-rights organization to a radical black-power organization in the ’60s, then to a right-wing, climate-denying think tank after Nixon. The style cues also fit in here, and watching the characters’ transformations from freshman year to their adult identities (especially Sam’s adoption of an impressive accessories collection) are fun if you’ve followed black popular culture and aesthetics over the past few years.

Coates: Yeah. I’m intentionally avoiding learning too much about who wrote what in the show, but Vann, you are dead-on in terms of the show’s deep knowledge of tradition. I feel like that’s all through the show, too. And maybe that is what lends itself to the kinds of generalizations you guys didn’t like. The whole thing felt like satire to me, though. In a good way. None of these black people really resembled any I knew—with two exceptions, Joelle and Coco. The latter gets more screen-time, and I think there is a strong argument that Coco is the grounding of the show. (Maybe an argument for Lionel, too.) But I thought Antoinette Robertson’s performance as Coco was so spot-on, and the character so sculpted, that I found myself rooting for her even as she sold out. It felt like she’d earned a break.