As a person of color, I was just really tired of the fact that I wasn't seeing my story in the culture.

This film isn't about "white racism", or racism at all. DEAR WHITE PEOPLE is about identity. It's about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who they understand themselves to truly be. And this societal conflict appears to be one that many share.

White people don't have that problem, they get to go through life never having to fit into a box, and it's really more so true for white men because even just being a woman, you sort of have to walk around other people's assumptions of you and it's so exhausting and there's a sense, especially among young people of wanting to just live your life, not having to wear the weight of that pressure - pressure that people of color feel, that gay people of color feel, that women of color feel.

I love when scenes are intentionally and meticulously planned so we feel like this is a handcrafted scene that only works in this moment and this movie, and that's the way I approach my films.

Racism is wrong, racism is very dangerous.

I have this natural thing in my head that when I sit down to write something serious, I tend to make jokes. I can't help it. I can't help but desire for the narrative to be as complicated and as truthful as possible. That's just the way my head works.

I'm very interested in clans and the way people group together, and there's a lot of group shots. There's a lot of people in positions that people feel like they're in attack mode, kind of pointed at each other in the frame. I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie, I'm not a fan of okay, "wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up, we'll figure it out in post." I hate that.