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Introduction
The Hate U Give is a critically acclaimed young adult novel written by an American author Angie Thomas and published in 2017. The book’s protagonist, sixteen-year-old Starr Carter, balances between two worlds: her poor black neighborhood, and her rich white school. She manages two different versions of herself without much difficulty until she becomes a witness to a brutal killing of her best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Khalil was black and unarmed, and his death sparks debates between representatives of two of Starr’s worlds, in the middle of which she finds herself. Having initially chosen to keep silence on what happened that night, Starr has to decide whether it is worth it and learn how to use her voice.
Double Consciousness
In order to fit in with the white world, Starr has to alter her personality in accordance with the laws of whiteness. According to Young, this phenomenon was defined by W.E.B. Du Bois – American sociologist and historian – as double consciousness. Double consciousness is the difficulty of looking at oneself through the racist society’s eyes and measuring one’s personality by this society’ means. Another way to define the principle that guides Starr’s life is to call it code switching – which is, as per Ford, the process of moving between different social identities in their corresponding contexts. Whichever way to call it, Starr has already become the master of the practice of modification by the time the reader encounters her. When she shows up to school, she is merely a fraction of herself, her personality altered in a way that her Blackness and ‘ghetto-ness’ are as unobservable as possible.
Starr know how to act depending on the context: for instance, at home she prefers to stand aside at parties because she knows that she has to work hard to be perceived as cool. However, she always dances at school discos – her Blackness at a white school automatically separates her from the crowd and, therefore, makes her cool. Starr knows how to speak when she is among white people: she consciously does not use the words that reveal her social background and does her best to speak ‘proper English’. Starr knows how to fit in with her school clique: with the white girls, she discusses Jonas Brothers and lets her friend ‘have’ the member Starr actually likes the most. At home, though, when spending time at her father’s store, Starr speaks about how much she likes Drake and jokingly plans marrying him. However, Grady notes how the world as the protagonist knows it ends with Khalil’s death. Losing a close friend due to his Blackness becomes the point of no return for Starr — and she begins the journey to embrace who she truly is.
Garden Heights Starr
Starr is a resident of a ghetto neighborhood named Garden Heights, where she lives with her mom, dad, brother Sekani and half-brother Seven. Kenya – Seven’s half-sister – is Starr’s friend and “is about the only person [she] hang[s] out with” in her area (Thomas 9). Starr explains it by not going to a local school and, therefore, not having many connections there; her closeness to Kenya is due to their common relative. When among her Garden Heights peers, she feels uncomfortable and sticks to her friend’s side. Starr knows their faces – she often helps her father at his grocery store, which is visited by many locals – but “you don’t get names and life stories when you’re bagging folks’ groceries” (Thomas 12). In other words, she does not know anyone and feels out of place at Garden Heights parties.
However, it is not as if Starr cannot make friends with people – she easily could if she chose to do that. She simply does not want to and does not care what peers of her area think about her – and she tells Kenya as much, to which Kenya retorts that it is the problem. Not for Starr – she feels fine “play[ing] it cool and keep[ing] to [her]self” (Thomas 14). She does not see the point in proving herself to Garden Heights because Starr’s real social life takes place in Williamson.
Williamson Starr
Williamson is a private school in a predominantly white area that Starr and her brothers were sent to by their parents. Parents estimated that it was an excellent opportunity for children to get a proper education in an area safer than Garden Heights. In Williamson, Starr is “cool by default” because she is one of the only Black students there (Thomas 15). One of her best friends, Maya, is a Chinese American, while her other friend, Hailey, and boyfriend, Chris, are white. Despite fitting in well with them and the rest of the school, as per Dwipujovati, it is only due to Starr’s understanding that “she cannot bring Garden Heights to Williamson” (24). Garden Heights Starr is who she truly is – Williamson Starr is how good Starr is at adapting.
Flipping the switch to become Williamson Star means quite a number of things. First of all, Starr never speaks at school the way she does at home – that is, she never uses slang. She is aware that slang makes her “hood” and replaces the “hood” words with the ones her friends use – for example, uses “Ewww” instead of “Ill” when showing her disgust (Thomas 73, 76). Moreover, she never mentions where she comes from – Starr refrains from talking about Garden Heights because she knows what kind of prejudices people have about places like her neighborhood. Therefore, when her friends tell stories their vacations and discuss their families, Starr prefers to listen and ask questions, not sharing anything with them. Additionally, Starr lets people have their way – she follows her clique wherever they go and does not argue with them over every little thing.
The most difficult thing for the protagonist, however, must be her decision to stay silent instead of expressing her disapproval. Starr is afraid of being perceived as the “angry Black girl”, which is a pervasive stereotype of Black females that is commonly resorted to in white culture (Thomas 73). Whereas with her family Starr can allow herself to be offended when something hurts her, with her friends she holds her tongue and keeps herself to herself. She wants to be liked and accepted so badly that Starr denies herself the right to be who she really is. She feels like she cannot say what she wants, act how she wants, and even feel what she feels without being judged for being ‘too Black’ – though she is Black. The tragedy that occurs, however unfortunate, prompts Starr to reevaluate her outlook and life and begin the journey to finding her voice.
Conclusion
Through the character of Starr, Angie Thomas explores the complicated relationship between identity and race. In pursuit of the desire to fit in with the white crowd, Starr denies her identity and becomes someone she is not every time she enters the school. Unfortunately, it is understandable in a racist society that uses the stereotypes of Black people to justify violence against them. However, there is no other way to change society’s perspective other than speaking up – in doing so, Starr gives herself the freedom to embrace her Blackness and learns how to do the right thing.
Works Cited
Dwipujovati, Dita. Starr’s Struggle to Find Her Identity in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give. 2020. Undergraduate thesis. Universitas Sanata Dharma Repository.
Ford, Tanisha C. “The Complexity of Black Girlhood is at the Heart of The Hate U Give.” The Atlantic, 2018, Web.
Grady, Constance. “Social issues YA novels can be terrible. The Hate U Give is a stunning exception.” Vox, 2018, Web.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. HarperCollins, 2017.
Young, Cate. “Through the Eyes of Others: “The Hate U Give” and the Burden of Racial Awareness.” Bitch Media, 2018, Web.
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