Anti-'Dear White People' Twitter rant accidentally proves show's point about white people

On Sunday evening, Twitter user and self-described nationalist Steve Hirsch weighed in on Dear White People, the Netflix series about race relations at a fictional Ivy League college campus that premiered on Friday.

"Can you imagine the outrage if there was a show called Dear Black People?" Hirsch tweeted. "Cities would burn. This anti-white rhetoric needs to stop."

Ironically, "Dear Black People" is the name of a so-called anti-political correctness house party that takes place on the show. The party features white students in blackface. It is conceived, initially, by white students who are upset that the main character, Samantha White, hosts a radio show about race called Dear White People. The white students view the party as an attempt to expose how racist Sam is — but do so by being even more racist themselves. 

It's a biting indictment of racial illiteracy that went completely over the heads of the respondents to Hirsch's Twitter post — most of whom appear to be white, and likely did not watch the show. Instead, they replied by lambasting the series' purported racism, threatening to cancel their Netflix accounts and, in one case, complaining that black people have never "thanked" white people for the U.S. Civil War:

Several Twitter users weighed in to point out the irony of the anti-Dear White People outrage:

Overall, this is exactly the kind of debate the show aimed to provoke — and ridicule. Dear White People is currently streaming on Netflix.

Correction: May 4, 2017