MTV causes stir with film on ‘White People’
One of the challenges for makers of the MTV documentary “White People” was getting folks to talk about race when they didn’t feel the issue concerned them — like those quoted as saying they consider white the “default race” or “normal.”
So filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas recorded white Americans in situations where they were forced to confront racial identity issues. He found a young Brooklyn man bewildered by the Asian immigrants on his block, a white man who attends a traditionally black college, teachers on a South Dakota reservation where resentment toward whites is palpable and a white man who teaches a college course on white privilege.
The documentary’s trailer alone created a stir. The full film debuts Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT, offered simultaneously online.