this is "nightline." >> tonight -- >> dear white people. >> as incidents of racial bias are increasingly caught on camera, this hit series tackling what it means to be black in america head on. >> i'm going to need to see your i.d. >> why you need to see my i.d.? >> i said show me some i.d.! >> characters mirroring real-life situations, sparking conversations on topics rarely discussed. >> blackness sometimes feels like a constant response to white people. plus -- >> this massive fissure is putting off so much heat and so much lava -- >> on hawaii's big island, volcano still raging. lava bombs and methane gas shooting from the ground. now a toxic cloud filled with acid. >> you can see what this wind is doing, it is kicking up all of

this steam and sul fare dioxide pumped into the air by that massive cauldron of lava behind me. detpool and the diva. the origin story of this unusual team-up. how ryan reynolds convinced celine dion to put deadpool in her new video "ashes." first here tonight the "nightline 5." >> our dad was in the hospital. >> smoking. >> still had to have a cigarette? >> had to. >> what are we doing? >> the nicoderm cq patch helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. you know why, we know how, nicoderm cq. can you live wearing powerful sunscreen? yes. neutrogena ultra sheer helps prevent early skin ageing and skin carry with a clean feel. the best for your feel. ultra sheer neutro

good evening. tonight, an inside look at a series taking on arguably the most sensitive issue in american life, race. the show is called "dear white people." it's on netflix. and its plot lines mirror today's real-life headlines, allowing the characters to speak frankly about taboo subjects in a way many of us wouldn't dare risk. here's abc's zachary kiesch. >> racial tensions on one university campus reaching a boiling point -- >> reporter: race has always been a thread in the social fabric of america. >> shocking video. >> the latest example of -- >> recently sparking a lot of conversation -- >> very painful issue of race in america -- >> white student called police on a black graduate student -- >> video surfaced -- >> members using a racist chant -- >> i don't like it -- >> video of a woman being &-p >> reporter: today technology has given voice to the voiceless.

>> killer, murderer, because we are black! >> reporter: caught on camera, no doubt. but the national conversations we have about race too often end when the cameras stop. >> you will not replace us! >> how did we get here? is this the america we've always been in? or is this a new america? >> reporter: justin simeon is exploring that conversation. >> action! >> reporter: one that shines light on black identity through the lens of a netflix series he created called "dear white people." the series is set on a predominantly white ivy league college campus. >> how did we get here? >> 200 years of -- >> slavery, sorry i asked. >> reporter: provocative themes like racial bias in law enforcement. >> i'm going to need to see your i.d. >> why to you need to see my i.d.?

>> son, i said i.d. >> i'm not your son. >> reporter: sexual orientation. white privilege. and interracial relationships. >> don't fall in love with your oppressive. >> it's called "dear white people," but it's really about being black. it's really about the fact that blackness sometimes feels like a constant response to white people, like you're always having to explain yourself. >> look at my african-american over here. look at him. >> one of the big things that changed between season 1 and 2 is the election of donald trump. how has that impacted the conversation? >> i think for me it's made the series a bit more urgent. not because these issues are brand-new to us. i think now folks are urgently trying to figure out, what happened? black folks are like, we've been bringing this up for some time. now that you're all ears, let's talk about it. >> reporter: sam white, played by logan browning, is one of the show's main characters. >> what are you? >> reporter: part provocateur, she wields her influence through her on-campus radio show. >> dear white people, here's a little tip. when you ask someone who looks

ethnically different, what are you? the answer is usually, a person about to slap the [ bleep ] out of you. >> at the surface, she's a biracial woman who wants to give voice to the people on campus who aren't heard as much. >> reporter: speaking her truth is a path towards progress as she sees it. >> oh, me? i was just pretty enough. >> reporter: at first the character cocoa conners, played by antoinette robinson, seems to be at odds. >> people take one look at my skin and they assume that i'm poor or uneducated or wretched. so yeah i tone it down. make myself more palatable. join a sorority. what's so wrong with that? everything. >> cocoa believes infiltrating the system is the best way to go about getting change, not raging against the machine but finding a way to find success within a world of whiteness. >> admit the same number of them and the acceptance rate goes down and that's something to

brag about. >> and i do enjoy bragging. >> she's very much aware of the world and how it perceives women of color. >> nobody's sort of presented to you in just one way. >> reporter: at times the show holding a mirror that exposes the divides and complexities that exist within the black community. >> you get away with murder because you look more like them than i do. that's your light-skinned privilege. >> reporter: sam's character becomes more complicated when we learn she's dating her white teaching assistant gabe mitchell. >> i want to be more than a hot lay for you. >> he'll never understand what it's like to be in her shoes but he really wants to understand. and i think sam sees that in him. and knows that it's genuine. >> oh, [ bleep ], sam, if i knew you liked them light i would have hollered. >> sam's character helps me understand the relationships she has with a white boyfriend and how it is viewed by some as kind of a shot at her blackness, right? >> yeah, this is so common. somebody who is prominent in the

black community, outspoken as an activist, you find out they have a white wife or husband. aahhh! you know what i mean? >> were you watching me sleep? >> reporter: their relationship explores the delicate dance that can be interracial dating. >> the construct of race really just gets in between us being human beings and communicating with each other. >> who are you to tell me what i should do? >> if you were really interested in reaching people, maybe you'd let them in. >> they get to a point where they become really, truly broken down, honest, and vulnerable with each other. >> you wouldn't hide behind this veiled anger. >> i didn't hear a question there. what i heard was a reprimand. about how i should process my experience. >> they're also having a conversation about whiteness and blackness in general. >> i'm black. in this society, that is what i am, period. >> the conversation between sam and gabe is almost like the conversation i feel like we all want to have, but we're on twitter or facebook. >> don't just run away from the conversation because you don't like where it's going.

>> this is what the conversation could be if we stay in the room together long enough to hear each other. >> it's hard not to learn a little bit about yourself when you're having these kinds of conversations. >> yeah, absolutely, yeah. it really punches you in the face. >> are you a student here? >> reporter: art imitating life. >> we've had a complaint, are you a student here? >> reporter: a recurring theme on the show. >> are you a sale student? >> of course, how else would i get in here? >> reporter: disturbing images of encounters between black people and the police. >> i go to uva! >> why do you need to see my i.d.? >> son, i said i.d. >> i'm not your son. >> reporter: season 1, a campus security officer drawing a gun on reggie, a black student, after the cops were called to a party. >> show me some i.d.! >> black comes at you real fast sometimes. reggie is literally having a near-death experience over being at a party and doing the same things that everythibody else i doing. every time i see a video of a

kid that looks just like me, which is in the wrong place at the wrong time being brutally murdered or taken into custody, that is traumatic. that's traumatic to me. it just felt like we had a responsibility to speak to that. >> unpack that, the intensity of that moment. >> it's still with me, actually. because when i read the script, you know -- it didn't hit me until like hours later. and i just cried. >> are you okay? >> reporter: reggie's narrative explores the collateral damage of that moment and how trauma often lingers long after the headlines disappear. >> even with the happy ending of reggie not dying that night, still comes with a lot of consequences. comes with a lot of wounds. >> i'm having panic attacks. it's not like the dude shot me -- >> no, don't do that, no. the worst thing we can do is normalize this stuff. >> most television shows, when something like that happens, we're done. we might reference it a couple times in the dialogue, but we're

done. for black folks, we're experiencing ptsd. >> reporter: justin makes that a point by revisiting reggie's pain throughout the series. >> why are you here? >> so i won't be labeled the angry black man. >> i think part of why mental health is a taboo in the black community is because we're all kind of in survival mode, we've been in survival mode for generations now. we don't realize that we're not fine. >> you cannot let those few seconds become your whole life! >> reporter: using the pen to push for progress, the team behind "dear white people" believe that lifting up a truth, a shared experience, can lead to a more empathetic society. >> something justin said to me before we even started filming the show is that playing this character might change somebody's life, or save somebody's life. >> i'm grateful that we're on a show that can allow kids, or whoever, to really have a place to kind of explore different views or feel like they can attach to a character or feel like they can look up to a character. i feel like a lot of our

characters are very aspirational. >> the fact that i have the opportunity to say something and tell people what i'm going through is not lost on me. i feel like i have to say something in my work. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm zachary kiesch in los angeles. up next here, our intrepid correspondent gets up close, and i mean extremely close, with a lava-spewing volcano. >> where this massive fissure is putting off so much heat and so much lava, just two weeks ago, this was pasture land. only botox® cosmetic is fda approved to temporarily make frown lines, crow's feet and forehead lines look better. it's a quick 10 minute treatment given by a doctor to reduce those lines. ask your doctor about botox® cosmetic by name. the effects of botox® cosmetic, may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away

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close and personal with that vo in hawaii exploding and expanding its wrath. what you br to see is both beautiful and extremely dangerous. here's abc's matt gutman. >> reporter: day 19. the wrath of kilauea continues on the big island of hawaii tonight, lobbing lava bomb into the air, pumping out a lake's worth of molten rock and incinerating everything in its path. with roads cut off, the only way in is on foot. that's the fissure we've been looking at for a couple of days now. everything you see in front of us wasn't here a couple of days ago when we first started coming here. that lava being geysered up in the air is 100, 150 feet up. it is incredibly powerful. you can feel all the heat it's generating. and also where i am used to be a valley. now it is literally creating this new topography. a ridge has formed where cows

u used to munch on cane grass. a royaling pit spitting out lava, creating rivers of molten rock, pouring across highways, cutting off access routes. >> it was at one point directed towards us and we evacuated. there's not a whole lot else we can do but be here and wait it out. >> reporter: from there they flow out to the ocean in a four-mile-long red-hot river. more than 280 people remain in shelters and about 50 structures have been destroyed. last week we met retired electrical engineer herschel hood. he was returning to his evacuated neighborhood. >> still here. >> reporter: but today herschel tells us that latest fissure decimated his home. >> i hope someday we can get pack to that piece of land because it will still be there underneath all that lava. >> reporter: the county says there are at least six active fissures right now. they're volcanic vents that spew lava. authorities are warning island residents about a steam release

containing laze, a toxic cloud of hydrochloric acid and glass crystals caused by the piping-hot lava mixing with seawater. for that reason officials have cut off access to coastal areas where the laze poses a threat. you can see what this wind is doing, kicking up all of this steam and sulfur dioxide. that's hazard does to breathe. there are multiple more times of it in the air than a couple of days ago pumped into the air by the massive cauldron of lava behind me. today that 22nd fissure continuing to erupt for the third consecutive day, piling up lava right up against the geothermal venture plant that supplies about one-quarter of the island's power, the state's largest utility. >> lava is starting to intrude on the thermal venture site. it's not easy to predict where it's going to go and when it's going to get there. >> reporter: the crisis at the plant the latest in a series of

emergencies triggered when kilauea sparked back to life earlier this month. but you can only see the full scope of kilauea's fury from above. >> it's incredible that we can fly right over those two rivers of lava down there. you can actually feel the heat being generated 2,000 feet above them. we followed those lava rivers to the ocean and that explosion of steam. >> that's that plume of laze they've been warning everyone about. >> reporter: helicopter pilot ethan shinoki has been flying over this area for 15 years. >> i've been in hawaii pretty much my whole life, born and raised, and i've never seen an event this big. >> reporter: the lava is actually creating more coastline in hawaii, permanently changing large swaths of the landscape here. >> what's incredible is where this massive fissure is putting off so much heat and lava, two weeks ago this was pasture land. wendy stovall monitors volcanic

unfortunate for the u.s. geological survey. how long do you expect this to continue for? >> it's a good question. we're trying to figure that out. seen lava, walked around on the coastal plain, definitely had some amazing experiences with being around lava flows. but this is a different scale altogether. >> reporter: most of hawaii's volcanos national park remains closed. normally this is a popular tourist destination drawing 2 million visitors here last year. >> kilauea itself is an extremely well-monitored volcano. we have lots of instruments out there. we're learning so much about how the system works. >> reporter: for so many families here, home will never be the same. dean navarez took this home video as she evacuated. she returned to this. but tourism officials say some bookings are already down up to 50% over this time last year. but on an island that was created by volcanos, long-time

residents are reconciled to the shifting lifestyle and shifting landscape. your neighbors lost pasture land, homes. >> that's sad. i'm sad about this. i've lost a lot too. >> reporter: jude farrow's lived here for decades. she's lost grazing land but not her love of the land. maybe there is life after the kilauea eruption? >> this is life. this is the life's energy right here. this is life. >> the regeneration of the earth. >> in another year or two, you'll see trees popping out of here. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm matt gutman in hawaii. next, ryan reynolds explains how he got celine dion to agree to this. ♪ how do you become america's best-selling brand? by opening new doors to big possibilities with the first ever ford ecosport.

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♪ each person working any more >> reporter: you know you're in a big summer blockbuster when celine dion is your opening act. celine's on the soundtrack with the ballad "ashes" simply because a superhero used his powers of persuasion. how did you get celine involved? >> we had this song we loved and we wanted celine. why not go for the legend in the worst case scenario you get a no. three hours later she said yes. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> you hear her sing and you go, oh, god, that's why you're celine dion. i'm not making this up, everybody in that theater watching her sing that song was weeping. >> celine! >> reporter: then deadpool does what he does best. he mixes in the comedy. >> yeah, this is -- this is deadpool 2. not titanic. you're like an 11, we need to

get you down to a 5, 5.5 tops. just phone it in. >> listen, this thing only goes to 11. so beat it, spider-man. >> god, i should have asked 'n sync. >> our thanks to chris connelly. and you can see the full "20/20" special, "lights, camera, summer: inside the blockbusters" tomorrow night at 10/9 central on abc. thank you for watching "nightline." as always we're online on our "nightline" facebook page