As a freshman in high school, I went to see The Hate U Give in the theater with my family over fall break. I was so passionate and fired up about the film that I spent days talking about it with my family, and I decided to start my own blog. The Hate U Give was the topic of my first post. Since then, I’ve gone through four years of high school, developed my college and career interests, and lived through one of the most controversial presidential terms and elections in history. Today, in 2020, I have watched and been a part of one of the most influential civil rights protests of my generation, the Black Lives Matter movement. The words I wrote as a freshman in high school could be published today in the New York Times, and my call to action would not have changed—but the list of victims of police brutality and systematic racism continues to grow.
Now I’m a senior in high school, and in my AP Literature and Composition class, we are reading this novel and analyzing recent police shootings to connect these events to themes in the book. It is my second read of The Hate U Give. As a white teenager living in Southern California, I will never identify personally with the experiences of author Angie Thomas’s main character, a Black teenageer named Starr Carter. However, what makes Thomas’s book so difficult yet compelling to read is that she blurs the lines of race.
In The Hate U Give, victim Khalil Harris was shot on the side of the road by a white police officer. Starr spends the novel wrestling with an identity crisis; she was born and lives in Garden Heights yet attends a white prep school 40 minutes away. Starr struggles with the idea of speaking out and defending her Black community, as she has allegiances to both sides. Starr deals with justification from white news media, white classmates, and police officers, and while Khalil was indeed a drug dealer, the question Thomas is asking her readers to think about is did he deserve to die? Thomas writes white characters that are stereotypically racist. But she also draws a picture of whites who are allies to the Black community.My rereading of this book and my differing responses over time show me just how much the presidency of Donald Trump, the polarization caused by current politics, and BLM have affected my perception of life in our country. Black Lives Matter forces us to confront systemic injustices within our country. Black Lives Matter forces us to realize how much all people in America need to think about perspectives other than their own. Looking at this issue through Starr’s eyes humanizes someone stereotyped within the Black community. When I wrote about this novel the first time, I wanted to make a point of understanding new perspectives other than my own. As I write about it again, I want to draw attention to how drastically different our political climate is. This post is more than saying Black Lives Matter. What Thomas does with her characters is introduce readers, particularly white readers, to the experiences of Blacks living in America – to the systemic injustices inherent within our system.. The Black experience in America is different from the experiences of other Americans, and it is time our politicians join with the rest of the country in changing systemic injustices that have persisted throughout the last few centuries. A Black professor at American University recently told me that in order to walk in someone else’s shoes, you have to first take off your own. The Hate U Give offers readers an opportunity to truly set aside political biases and talk a walk in the shoes of a Black teenage girl.
