“Woke or Not?” The Complexity of Negotiating Blackness. An Analysis of Dear White People's Characters Sam and Coco
von Friederike Alm “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” Radio host Mister Señor Love Daddy in Spike Lee’s „Do the Right Thing“, 1989, featured on Sam’s radio show in „Dear White People“, 2017 Introduction Coco : ‘Dear White People. Let me tell you about yourselves while I don’t even know who the hell I am.’ Sam : Oh, I don’t know who I am, Colandrea? Coco : No, you don’t, but I do. You’re the girl who didn’t learn she was Black until Beth Wheeler left you out of her second-grade sleepover, ‘cause you’d be the ‘only one’. Sam : That is the last time I share a personal story with you. Coco : Well, you see, with me, there is no confusion. People take one look at my skin and they assume that I’m poor or uneducated or ratchet. So yeah, I tone it down. Make myself more palatable; join a sorority, what’s so wrong with that? Sam : Everything. (Dear White People, Netflix, Chapter IV, minutes 19.30-20.55, italics by F...