As a result, Starr is left to deal with a deeply traumatic event without a reliable school support system. Though her boyfriend Chris (KJ Apa) and best friends Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter) and Maya (Megan Lawless) know that something has changed, she finds it difficult to confide in them because she believes they’ll perceive her differently if they know where she’s from and what she’s witnessed. In the aftermath of the shooting, Starr struggles to hide the trauma and fear she’s feeling from her social circle at Williamson. In other words, Black boys are socially rewarded for confirming or reinforcing problematic stereotypes about Blackness while Black girls are harshly punished. For Black girls, however, fitting in is much more difficult because they’re positioned as loud, aggressive, and unapproachable, leading to increased, disparate disciplinary actions, including a suspension rate that’s six times that of their white female peers.
A 2013 study published in the Sociology of Education found that Black boys who attend white suburban schools have an easier time fitting in due to “positive” associations with their athletic skill and presupposed “coolness.” While those assumptions are reductive and limiting, they provide an avenue for integration. The social consequences Starr fears are real, and for her, assimilation is a survival tactic. When she goes to Williamson, the markers of her Blackness are stripped away and she begins code-switching because “Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.” Being stereotyped as the “angry Black girl” isn’t a petty or trivial concern. Until Khalil’s death, Starr’s life has been marked by a strict dichotomy between the low-income and predominantly Black Garden Heights neighborhood that she calls home, and Williamson, the upper-middle class, predominantly white prep school that she and her brothers attend. The Hate U Give, based on Angie Thomas’s bestselling young-adult novel, examines Starr’s relationship to Blackness after she witnesses the police-involved death of her childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith). Du Bois describes “double consciousness” as the difficulty of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of a racist white society and measuring oneself by the means of a nation that looked back in contempt.” It’s the principle that guides The Hate U Give’s Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg) until a tragedy merges her two worlds.
Video of The Hate U Give | Official Trailer | 20th Century FOX