Critical Essay on 'The Hate U Give': Culture Analysis

In the lives of the Carter family, living in Garden Heights, the poor neighborhood we see the development of the issues a low-class neighborhood deals with in an everyday matter. Starr Carter lives life in the ghetto while attending Williamson, a predominantly white upper-class high school. In the movie The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman we look into the racial inequalities and the lack of proper institutions from social class leading to drugs, gangs, and crime that runs rampant in the ghetto. As we look into the different theoretical perspectives of prejudice, each one has a unique view to explain how society and social interactions work. The three main theories are functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Functionalism reveals how prejudice is necessary to society and how it functions as a form of solidarity and dysfunctions in a form of group antagonism however, it does not justify why there is prejudice. Conflict theory states that there is always a ruling class and a lower class in which both classes are in a state of conflict and are always in a state of inequality and conflict for power and resources. Symbolic interactionism states how the way we interact with individuals of our same group leads to learned prejudice against another group. Several sociological aspects of the movie play a vital role in Garden Heights and how they impact the Starr family. However, the role of social stratification not only affects them, but it also affects everyone in the neighborhood in both social and environmental factors from conformity to prejudice.

The United States is an open system, meaning that social mobility is possible for anyone living here. In the Erik Wright model of social class, we have the capitalists, petty bourgeoisie, managers, and workers. The Erik Wright model is based upon the Karl Marx model of social class we have the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; the capitalist and the workers. Capitalists are the business owners, the petty bourgeoisie are the small business owners, the managers are the people who have authority over others, and the workers do the labor. In the Gilbert and Kahl model of the social class ladder, we are able to see the different rankings of classes from capitalist, upper-middle, lower-middle, working, working-poor, and the underclass. This class model is based on Max Weber’s components of social class; power, property, and prestige. A person’s power is the ability to control others, the property is wealth, and prestige is your recognition and respect for your social status; these three are used to determine your social class. The neighborhood at Garden Heights would be considered working class and lower while the majority of the people who attend Williamson would be considered upper-middle class. Because Starr lives in the ghetto, certain behaviors and attitudes Starr is considered “hood” while when other people at William who do those certain behaviors and attitudes are considered “cool”, as a result, she code-switches but refuses to assimilate. Her friends at Williamson Maya, Hailey, and her boyfriend, Chris, cannot seem to know the reality of living in Garden Heights because of this she feels conflicted to talk about Khalil’s death but ultimately decides to stand up for Khalil, especially after the students at Williamson decide to skip school to protest for the death of Khalil.

Khalil was a victim of the scapegoat theory in which his death became a means of aggression and blame towards him and black people. When Khalil died it was noted that police officer badge One-Fifteen killed him for holding a “gun” but in reality, it was a brush. A lot of people saw that as an act of police brutality. From a conflict theorist perspective, we see that the dominant group uses prejudiced views on a minority group perceived as a threat (Griffiths et al. 231). The power elite, people at the top are able to control the rules of society which becomes in favor of the privileged, and are able to decide what is criminal and what is not (Griffiths et al 140).

In a study by Babad about preferential treatment in television, he states, “Preferential behavior in television interviewing is a particularly sensitive issue because it has the potential to affect a large audience…” (340). During Starr’s interview with the media, the interviewer only cared about Khalil’s King Lord gang affiliation and drug dealing, favoring stereotypes of black people as malignant. Comparing that to the news sources covering police officer One-Fifteen shows a certain bias towards white privilege protecting law enforcement by portraying the event as an accident and showing the police officer’s dad on TV stating how he believes that his son is not a monster and how their lives were threatened, trying to gain sympathy from the viewers, it becomes justified. We find out that the police officer was not indicted for charges by the grand jury and was only placed on administrative leave. If viewers are exposed to this constant view of preferential treatment, over time, we may become prejudiced against these ideas presented to us; likewise, the culture of prejudice theory states how prejudice is embedded in our culture (Griffiths et al. 232).

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From a symbolic interactionist perspective, we look at Starr’s friend Hailey. As stated by Griffiths et al., “… racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group … These interactions contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group…” (231). The authoritarian personality also states how highly prejudiced people are insecure and intolerant, and long for firm boundaries to be set by strong authority. Hailey for example confessed that all black people are the same and that Starr is different by the fact that she is the “non-threatening black girl” (The Hate U Give). If it weren’t for Starr to code-switch into the white dominant culture, Hailey most likely would have viewed her as a different person, a threatening person. Hailey has come to the conclusion that the majority of black people are dangerous, but she makes an exception for Starr. We can also see that Hailey proclaimed that Khalil was nothing more than a drug dealer and a dangerous person. She only cared about the after-the-fact notion of drug dealing and not why people are inclined to do what they do. Khalil said that his “McJob” wasn’t working out and he needed something else that would help him, which was drug dealing. Khalil’s mother was an addict, his grandmother had cancer and was fired from her job, and he needed to support his little brother. We could say that Khalil should have continued to go to school to further educate himself, in hopes to get a better job in the years to come but he was only sixteen; a kid who isn’t even an adult who has to face life as an adult. The pressure to provide for the family knowing that there is no other alternative.

From a functionalist theorist perspective, we can see how Starr’s uncle Carlos acclimates and conforms to the white dominant culture against the black stereotype; he becomes part of an in-group solidarity in which he believes that white people are not dangerous and an out-group antagonism that black people are dangerous. Starr’s uncle explains the logic behind a police’s mind during a traffic stop routine using Starr’s example: An upper-class white person reaching into the windows and Starr’s uncle thought it was a gun would he tell him to put his hands up or shoot him? We are able to see that because, in this hypothetical situation, Starr’s uncle decides to tell the white person to put their hands up rather than the ladder which is to shoot them. We can infer from the attitude and the way Starr’s uncle said this answer that if it were a black person, the result would most likely be the ladder, not the former. Rather than treating everyone equally, this scene justifies an unequal society or in Starr’s uncle's words, “We live in a complicated world, Starr” (The Hate U Give).

The Hate U Give reveals the nature of individual and institutional discrimination in areas of poverty such as black communities being deprived of the opportunities and resources needed to achieve, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the succeeding generations of black communities. With this loophole, many of the people in Garden Heights are placed in an environment where they cannot escape poverty without relying on illegitimate opportunities, which belittles black people in the form of stereotypes. The labeling theory explains how labels of certain people or groups of people change their perception of themselves, leading to a change of behavior to the standard of that label which causes deviance. Due to the burdens created by poverty, Maverick, Starr’s dad himself became part of a gang, sold drugs, and eventually went to prison. Maverick explains to Starr during their conversation about Tupac’s phrase “Thug Life”; The hate u give little infants fucks everybody. Maverick speaks about how society’s system was made to work against black people. There were no proper institutions nearby, no proper jobs available just low-paying jobs that won’t get you anywhere. Drug dealing is a multi-billion dollar industry and it becomes a trap that people fall into. As a result, even if people like Maverick wanted to find a good job he is labeled as a criminal by society, as he has a criminal record. It would be very hard for him to even find any decent job opportunities. We see how social mobility in an intergenerational cycle is difficult to obtain because low-income communities, like Garden Heights, do not have adequate access to resources such as proper education and employment.

I do think social class and race do affect my life chances of success. Growing up in an Asian working-class family, my mom was the only person who supported us, working 2 full-time jobs as a nurse assistant and a caretaker for the elderly to pay the rent and bills. My dad did not work at all because he had a back injury when he was still living with us. My parents had a very permissive parenting style, my mom especially was always working and nobody ever came up to check on me with my school work and it just made it seem like my mom didn’t care for me but in reality, she did but. I really wanted to see a psychiatrist to see what was going on but, my mom just made enough to pay rent and bills and I did not want to burden this on them so I just dealt with it hoping that it would get better over time. I didn’t know at the time but I was bipolar II and had attention deficit disorder because of this it led to my grades deteriorating and not being able to graduate high school on time. If I was able to see help for myself If I had the money, at that time it definitely would have been a different outcome, but because my parents did not make enough it just did not happen. Just looking at my mom working hard just makes me want to do better for myself, I want to eventually finish college and get a decent-paying job to support my parents and myself.

The Hate U Give explains the notion of how our system doesn’t always work. People in poverty lead to illegitimate means of obtaining goals. These decisions that people make to try to improve their lives and the people around them end up being looked at with a negative stigma and also ruin their lives at the same time. We see the result of these means in social media and on mainstream television, people just blame the people who are discriminating against them, trying to create change. As a result those people who discriminate against others often scapegoat the out-group for making their in-group become that way. In the end, it leads to a standoff of both groups becoming intolerant of each other, refusing to talk, and not understanding why they think a certain way or have hate for each other.