The Hate U Give: Would you understand the Struggle?
By Emma Paulino
Photo from Article on the Uprise
I bet you have been looking for a movie that you can relate to on the level of relevance to the time we are in especially with the black lives matter movement because lately there have not been a lot of movies like that. The Hate U Give was released on October 5th of 2018, based on the Young Adult Novels published on February 28th, 2017, by Angie Thomas. The movie was directed by George Tillman Jr. One of the stars in The Hate U Give is Amandla Stenberg who plays the main character Starr Carter. Other cast members are Regina Hall, KJ Apa, Algee Smith, Sabrina Carpenter, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie, and Issa Rae. Some ways you can watch it are on Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+. I do not recommend this movie to a younger audience like those 8 and under because there is violence and explicit words in the movie.
This movie is about a teenage girl who has grown up in the hood and watched her best friend get murdered due to being racially profiled by a racist cop. After this she starts to understand more about the truth of the place she lives in and the people she’s known forever and what it’s like to be a part of two completely different worlds. Such as living downtown in the hood where she can't be too school starr and then going to a mostly white school where she can't be too hood starr and in this school where no one understands her. She also struggles with choosing which one to be a part of and who to be. The movie is a mix of scary and joyful and is about having hope and learning who you want to be. It's a real eye-opener to the world that some of us know as our safe homes with roofs over our heads and our held-down lives. It is similar to some of the shows you might have watched like All American and All American Homecoming.
I have watched it 3 times in total, twice recently and once two years ago. I personally love the movie because it's very truthful and a serious topic. This is the stuff going around in some places. Some people deal with it their whole life and people like me go around the day feeling comfortable like nothing can ever happen but it did. The Hate U Give is realistic fiction. The story might not be real but that doesn't mistake the fact that police brutality and bad choices affected by racism happen out there in the world. There are racist cops that do these things and it's not ok. I feel like this movie really showed that on another level they said what needed to be said.
My favorite scene in the movie happens when Starr just found out that they are letting the cop free with no charges and she is literally in the car about to take her half-brother to the hospital because he's hurt. She still gets out of the car and tells her boyfriend to take her half-brother's sisters somewhere safe. Her half-brother decides to come with her even though he is hurt. So they are running and pushing through this crowd that is protesting for the justice of Kahil. She sees all of this fighting between 2 sides and she decides she has to say something.
She decides that it doesn't matter if people know that she is the witness or that people might come after her so she grabs the microphone and she stands on top of the police car. She talks about the wrongness of Khalil's death and leads a chant and yells “KAHIL LIVED”. She didn't talk about how he died or what happened and she said “KAHIL LIVED”. That was a very important and empowering moment.
Do you know what Topac said he said “ THUG LIFE '’ ( The Hate U Give Little Infants F Everybody)? Starr said it's not the hate U give it's the hate WE give. The difference between the two is that the hate U give means that YOU do this YOU bring this hate but when she says WE it means WE all have this effect on this thing. WE all do this.
I would highly recommend this movie to other people because it's an eye opener and it's also just a very powerful movie that can help people understand more about what it's like to be a person of racial background and how people treat when they have set opinions about but the truth is the movie doesn't even fully capture what it's like. Also, like I said, you can watch it on Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ and I do not recommend this movie to a younger audience like those 8 and below.