If there’s a thesis moment in “White People,” the provocatively-titled documentary that premiered Wednesday night on MTV, it comes when a group of white teenagers are talking about how proud they are to be colorblind. “I could care less what race someone is?” one girl says, with an upspeak lilt. “I was never taught to really notice it?”
Soon afterward, the camera turns to a black girl, shaking her head. “It just feels like you’re trying to avoid what the real issue is,” she says.
The limits of a so-called colorblind philosophy — the discussions it skirts, the barriers it creates — was the a-ha conclusion of a 2014 study, commissioned by MTV, about millennials and bias. Eighty-four percent of respondents said their families had taught them that everyone should be treated the same, regardless of race. But only 30 percent of white respondents reported that their families talked about race any further than that.
We can feel, on a daily basis, the absence of conversation, the oversimplification and mistrust. Being on the right side of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is easy. Being horrified at the arrest and death of Sandra Bland is easy too. Discussing the role race plays in all of our daily interactions — acknowledging that race does play a role — is hard.
So should the burden fall to MTV? The network has issues of its own; this week, Nicki Minaj loudly complained about the Video Music Awards nominations, suggesting (with good reason) that if she were thin and white, her “Anaconda” video would be up for a bigger prize. Still, MTV, with its megaphone to millennials, has appointed itself a racial mediator; its “Look Different” antibias campaign, a series of shows and online tools, was launched a year ago in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League, La Raza, the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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“White People” is the highest-profile piece of the project yet: a 40-minute table-setter directed and hosted by Jose Antonio Vargas, the former New York Times reporter-turned-advocate for illegal immigrants. Vargas travels around the country, convenes people in living rooms and auditoriums, asks them to speak dark inner truths, then furrows his brow dramatically when someone says something problematic. The furrowing happens often — MTV pioneered reality TV, where manufactured conflict is required — which is part of the reason the conservative media has whipped itself into a frenzy over the film’s purported “white shaming.”
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It’s an overblown charge, but worth addressing more explicitly than MTV dares. The movie only hints at the way a term like “white privilege” — descriptive as it is, rooted in academia — breezes past the economic uncertainty that fuels so much social tension. The words we use, on all sides, can shut down meaningful discussion. Maybe we need new language altogether.
Still, MTV deserves credit for working with what we’ve got, and Vargas gets credit for coaxing a few people to new conclusions. In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, he urges second- and third-generation Italians to see the similarities between their ancestors and the wary, insular Chinese immigrants who have moved into the neighborhood — and vice versa.
The grown-ups come around reluctantly. Their twentysomething kids are easier to sway. Statistics suggest that gay marriage is largely a nonissue for younger generations: familiarity breeds acceptance. If the MTV demographic is open to this earnest, surface-scratching effort to truly talk about race, that’s a good start. Especially if MTV also extends the conversation to itself.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @JoannaWeiss.
Watch: ‘White People’ trailer
Related:
• Michael P. Jeffries: Rachel Dolezal a lesson in how racism works
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• Ward Sutton: Where race relations stand in America