The Hate U Give: Keep Fighting

Tupac fans are familiar with the acronym he created to describe systematic oppression:

Angie Thomas' debut novel The Hate U Give builds on Tupac's understanding and tells the story of high schooler Starr Carter who navigates between the worlds of her predominantly white private school and her predominantly black neighborhood. After witnessing a horrific police brutality crime, she has to decide whether to keep quiet for her own safety or to speak out for her friend.

The film adaptation came out earlier in October, and just as when I read the book, I cried at least three separate times. Of course, scenes and characters had been modified slightly, but overall I was impressed with the attention that had been shown to keeping the story consistent with the novel version.

Starr's quest, highlighted even more by additional dialogue in the film, is to be the voice for those who have none. She fights the overt racism of the policeman's decision-making and the covert racism of her classmates, which proves to be almost more exhausting. One of Starr's main struggles is keeping her two worlds separate so she can adjust her personality to fit in, but this becomes increasingly more difficult as details of the trial reach her school and people in her community find out her true identity.

White viewers like me probably haven't experienced this acute form of compartmentalization. We all know how to adjust our behavior to fit the context, but most of us experience cohesion across our lives' environments. That's one of the reasons this story is so moving: now I can picture how wrenching it must feel to live a divided life.

But even after we've all read the novel and seen the film and cried over it and posted on social media about how amazing it was, we still have to remember that this story is more than just this story. We have to be careful how we talk about the characters and events. Yeah, the movie was "so good," but we have to push ourselves to continue thinking from perspectives we may or may not have had experience with after we leave the theater or re-shelve the book.

For much of white America, this story is a wake-up call, a slap in the face to people who think the judgment of policemen is infallible, a full one-eighty for people who participate in bandwagon activism like so many of Starr's privileged friends. But for much of black America, this is just another story from their neighborhoods, their schools, their hometowns. From microaggressions to profiling to murder, racism still sours our country.

So yeah, I think you should buy this book and see the movie. I think you should tell everyone you know. But I also think you should refrain from gushing "I LOVED it" while walking out of the theater. Let's not romanticize the suffering of families, of cities, and of generations that evoked this story. Let's not forget that one month before the film adaptation premiered, NCCU student DeAndre Ballard was killed outside his apartment complex, and the guard responsible claims self-defense and has already returned to work. (Sound familiar?)

Stories like Thomas' accomplish the best of human connection: they allow outsiders to access perspectives that never would have been available to them otherwise. But our work is far from over. Tuning our perspectives and practicing empathy is just the beginning. Storytelling won't save lives, but the actions we take as a result of our broadened empathy does. Voting in empathetic officials does save lives. Standing up to microaggressors and voicing dissent when systematic oppression is enacted does save lives.

Thomas closes her novel with a promise to never stop fighting injustice. Don't let Starr's story end on that page.