THE HATE U GIVE: RACIAL TENSION

Racial tensions in this country are on the rise again. What once began to taper off is suddenly coming back. The one thing that remains is that those tensions aren’t stoked by one person, one group or another. It is a much more complicated set of circumstances than can be found in the given number of letters found in a tweet. And much of the problems are not from the incidents taking place but from a press in need of news items to fill a 24/7 schedule and draw in viewers. Confrontation sells.

The movie THE HATE U GIVE was released last year to little fanfare, favorable reviews and a modest box office success. It should have done better. The story covers the issue from a number of positions, shows the problems that can be found on all sides and tackles the issues we deal with daily in a way that should help all to understand better. Being white I will never know what it’s like to be pulled over as a black man. But that doesn’t mean I can’t understand what it’s like. This film deals with that issue and surrounds it with more.

Amanda Stenberg stars as Starr Carter. Her father “Mav” Carter (Russell Hornsby) owns a small grocery store in their neighborhood of Garden Heights. Her mother Lisa (Regina Hall) works and wants the best for her children, a way to escape the low income neighborhood, so she sends them to a better school in an upper crust location.

Starr is not a simple teen. She has two personas she calls Starr 1 and Starr 2. One she presents to the upper class white friends she has at school. The other is more hood oriented. Both are depicted here as completely different. What on the surface some would call cultural appropriation in the white friends she has it is honestly their adapting to what they learn and hear. They accept her and while they seem to be placating her they actually are just teens acting like teens. Her neighborhood friends are different. They frown on her attending the other school, in spite of the fact as Starr says early on the school there only results in drug use, gang membership and teen pregnancy.

The two worlds collide in this movie but less in the friends around her and more in the single person named Starr. At a party in the neighborhood she runs into Khalil (Algee Smith), a friend she grew up with and had a crush on. Gunplay erupts and he offers to take her home. On the way there they are pulled over. Khalil argues with the officer about why he was pulled over, friendly but assertively. Starr tells him repeatedly what she was taught by her father, to do as you are told. When Khalil steps back to the driver’s window after being told to stand at the back and reaches in to pick up a hairbrush, the officer shoots and kills him. Thus is set in motion the incidents that will forever change the life of Starr, her family and friends forever.

The various viewpoints are presented her. The neighborhood is outraged over the incident. An activist tries to get Starr to come forward but to do so means discussing Khalil’s occupation of dealing drugs for King (Anthony Mackie), a gang lord her father once worked for but left. The two have not seen eye to eye ever since. Starr knows that if she speaks out it will put her family in danger with the gang. She hesitates. But she realizes that if she doesn’t speak then no one will for Khalil.

What makes the movie work is a combination of performances, writing and taking one of the most open views on the topic of race relations I’ve ever seen on film. A few moments tend to bend towards the accusations of police brutality here but that’s not the only thing that has caused what transpires to happen. A neighborhood where drug lords rule and no one stands up to them is another factor, one that leads the police to behave the way they do. And Starr’s uncle is also an officer who sees things through the same eyes as the rest of the force. Blacks who are unwilling to defend their way of life are juxtaposed against whites who are unaware of what it transpiring and yet pay lip service to it. There are a ton of facets to this story and all combine to make it work. A cycle of violence is perpetuated by both sides, but Starr shows that there is a need to end that cycle.

One performance that deserves mention here is that of Russell Hornsby. While everyone is good in this film it is sad that his performance didn’t get notice or a nomination in any awards shows. It is so on the mark that it deserved to be recognized.

Movies like this more often than not attempt to paint a portrait of one side as evil and the other as pure as snow. Reality lies somewhere in between. That’s what this movie did with the topic at hand and in so doing gives us all a better understanding of the world we live in. Perhaps more people need to watch it, to understand both sides of the issue. And maybe in so doing things will head back towards where they were headed, where race wasn’t an issue like it had been in the past.

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