Dear White People

Sam makes a student film that is critical of what she sees as white people's widespread fear of Barack Obama and titles it "Rebirth of a Nation." This is a reference not only to D.W. Griffith's notoriously racist 1915 Civil War movie El nacimiento de una nación (1915) but also to something that filmmaker Spike Lee experienced while he was a first-year student at NYU's graduate film school. After being required to watch Griffith's film and objecting to the fact that his professors taught it only as a milestone in the technical development of cinema with no attention paid to its racism and its legacy of helping to relaunch the KKK, Lee made a student short film titled The Answer (1980) that responded to The Birth of a Nation himself. "The Answer" so offended many of his NYU professors that Lee was nearly expelled from NYU, but was ultimately saved by a faculty vote.

When Sam is in the dining hall and chastises Kurt for eating in their dining hall - just before she stands up; she closes her Macbook twice.

The end credits include photographs of the real-life blackface (and brownface) college parties that inspired the film's climax.

Referenced in Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner: Los Angeles (2019)