Thug Life, Black Life and Everything in Between
A Legacy of Struggle
Anytime I see a video of a white police officer using excessive force on a black man or woman — murdering them and then later claiming fear in front of the world — my heart squeezes as bitterness and hate wash over me.
There is no comfort when this occurs; nothing that can make me believe that not all white officers are this way; that my black skin isn’t viewed as a threat; that my black life, and my Brothers’ and Sisters’ black lives, matters, too.
Police brutality against people of color is a grotesque and longstanding spectacle that is undeniably rooted in racism. It’s a reoccurring, blatant act of violence, and in this age of smartphones and social media, it has become hypervisible and impossible not to see.
And yet, when an act of police brutality occurs, it is often contested, belittled and distorted in the media to the point where the victims — the murdered, unfinished, black souls — are seen as less than human.
Addressing difficult and emotional topics like systemic racist violence, the film, The Hate U Give, offers young adult audiences a nuanced, yet digestible insight into the systematic and racial oppressions that have left black communities in a state characterized by crime, violence and poverty.
THUG LIFE
Before we get started, it’s important to know that the title of the film is inspired by the late Tupac Shakur’s mantra, T.H.U.G L.I.F.E, which stands for: The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.
The phrase, like the movie, points towards a cycle of harm produced through hate and racism. It reminds us that hateful attitudes and practices have the power to transcend generations, and leave behind damaging, long-lasting effects at the community and individual level.
The film opens with a scene in the predominantly black neighborhood of Garden Heights, Georgia, as the protagonist, 16-year-old Starr Carter, remembers “the talk” her father, Maverick, gave her and her two younger siblings when she was younger.
You know the talk.
No, not that one — not the one about the birds and bees and how babies are made. This talk is much more serious: It’s about how to act when you encounter police officers so that they don’t shoot you right there on the spot.
It’s a talk that black parents in every era have had to give to their children — the moment you, as a black kid in America, realize that you’re not safe from racism and prejudice, and you never were.
Starr is nine when she gets the talk. Her half-brother Seven is ten, and her brother Sekani, whose name means joy, is one. During this scene, Maverick also introduces the kids to the Black Panthers’ Ten-Point Program, which he refers to as “our own bill of rights.” On October 15, 1966, Newton & Bobby Seale drafted this Ten-Point Program to establish the direction and goals of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The fact that those points are still relevant to this day — that they are still needed, just goes to show how not much has changed: Black Americans are still fighting to live in a society that doesn’t always want them to.
It’s interesting to note that number seven of the program calls for “an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people,” and it is literally the police murder of a young, unarmed black teen, which Starr is the only witness to, that the film is grounded in.
Before Maverick wraps up his lecture about the gritty, dangerous reality of black life, he tells Starr and her brothers: “Now just because we gotta deal with this mess, don’t you ever forget that being black is an honor cause you come for greatness,” and reminds them to “know your rights. Know your worth.”
These kinds of positive reinforcements are sprinkled throughout the film, and they remind us that even though black people have to constantly endure systemic injustices fueled by racism and hate, there is light and beauty in our black skin, and we are worthy.
Contextualizing Our Pain and Struggle
Following the murder of Khalil Harris by a jittery, racist cop, The Hate U Give begins to unravel all the ways in which systematic oppression has left Garden Heights overflowing with drugs and consequently, crime and violence.
It is the reason why Starr’s parents arrange for her to attend Williamson, a private, predominantly white high school on the other side of town:
“The high school in the Heights is where you go to get jumped, high, pregnant or killed,” Starr narrates at the start of the film. “We don’t go there. So Mama sent us to another school — where everyone is college bound.”
It’s clear from Starr’s description that part of the problem within her community is that it lacks the resources and funding to nurture and teach young, black men and women. While Williamson breeds students who are “college bound” and prepared to succeed in the real world, Garden Heights produces kids who are statistically likely to become criminals, drug dealers or single mothers.
Though she is blunt in her assertion, Starr doesn’t blame these students for their circumstances; rather, she points towards a broken, unaccountable and underfunded educational system as the cause.
In another scene, Maverick explains to Starr and Sekani that Tupac was attempting to “school us in how the system is designed against us” through T.H.U.G L.I.F.E.
He explains that the reason why so many people in their neighborhood deal drugs is because they need the money. However, because they aren’t educated; because the school systems failed them and there aren’t any real jobs offered, they fall into the trap — the trap being selling drugs, a multi-billion-dollar, illegal industry, which Maverick admits to having been apart of:
“Brothers like me and Khalil get caught up cause it looked like a way out. And then they trap us and we end up in prison, another billion-dollar hustle…that’s how I ended up in jail with my own daddy.”
Maverick isn’t exaggerating here when he says that prisons are a “billion-dollar hustle.” In the United States, the mass incarceration rate exceeds all other nations, and with the rise of private, for-profit prisons, it is unlikely that we’ll see a major decrease anytime soon.
When you consider how US prisons collude with the educational system to create a pipeline of black bodies into their prison cells, the fate of poor, black and brown people in this country feels even more dire.
According to the American Bar Association, “The NAACP Legal Defense Fund described this pipeline as ‘funneling of students out of schools and into the streets, and the juvenile correction system perpetuates a cycle known as the School-to-Prison-Pipeline, depriving children and youth of meaningful opportunities for education, future employment, and participation in our democracy.’”
More often than not, these “children and youth” are black or Hispanic and come from low income backgrounds. In fact, according to the NAACP, people of color are imprisoned at “more than five times the rate of whites,” and are likely to be stopped and searched by police more than any other race.
In depicting these harsh and difficult realities, the film never attempts to shame or stereotype its black characters. It doesn’t mask the reality that those who sell drugs and participate in other illegal activities often do so not because they want to, not because they’re inherently “bad,” but because they have no other choice.
For example, when Starr gets on national TV to talk to a reporter about Khalil’s death, she defends his past as a drug-dealer, explaining that though his mom loved him, she was an addict and couldn’t provide much in terms of food and money for him, his little brother and his sick grandmother. This led to Khalil taking the only available job in the neighborhood that would pay him enough to help his family: selling drugs for King, the reigning drug lord in Garden Heights.
Essentially, the film attributes poverty and criminal activity within the black community not to stereotypes such as laziness or an inherent, predisposal to violence, but to a lack of community resources and the failure of government and educational agencies to provide greater opportunities for youth of color.
In the process, it asks us to reconsider how we think and talk about those who are disadvantaged and limited in their circumstances due to external, overarching conditions.
Black Racial Stereotypes and Victim Blaming
While at Reuben’s BBQ, a local mom and pop restaurant in Garden Heights, Starr and her childhood friend Kenya watch a news segment of the shooting, and see Brenda Harris, Khalil’s mother, on TV, hysterical, her breasts out, looking, as us black folks say, “a damn mess.”
“Why would they put Ms. Brenda on TV like that,” Kenya asks. This is not to imply that Ms. Brenda’s state of dishevelment makes her unworthy of being seen.
However, as black women themselves, Starr and Kenya undoubtedly realize what this image of Harris does in the public sphere; how it perpetuates and reinforces stereotypes of black people as poor, trashy and loud; how it distorts Khalil’s existence and the existence of every other impoverished, black individual in their community.
It doesn’t matter if Harris is poor because of a host of external, systematic and racial issues. It doesn’t matter if she’s loud and angry over the death of her only child at the hands of police. Stereotypes are powerful, and they don’t need context or background to be validated.
Earlier in the film, we also see how the media and police, armed with bias and racist attitudes, attempt to villainize black people even after their deaths.
During Starr’s questioning following Khalil’s murder, she is berated with questions that mostly have to do with his past. Not once do the officers, a Hispanic woman and a white man, question her about the officer who shot Khalil or about what happened at the scene.
Instead, their questions are aimed at creating a narrative of Khalil as guilty and responsible for his own murder. They are meant to paint him as a no good, drug-dealing thug who deserved to die.
In today’s society, it is common to see news reports “headline claims made by police or other officials that appear unsympathetic or dismissive of black victims,” writes Huffington Post’s Nick Wing. In other cases, “the headlines seem to suggest that black victims are to blame for their own deaths, engaging in what critics sometimes allege is a form of character assassination.”
However, when creating narratives and headlines for white criminals and murderers, news outlets often depict suspects more positively than they deserve. Sometimes, these headlines will even “exhibit an air of disbelief at an alleged white killer’s supposed actions,” writes Wing.
Below are a few examples that Wing has compiled to show the stark differences between media portrayals of black victims and white suspects.
These headlines show the kind of stories we like to tell about black people even after their deaths: stories about cycles of drug use, crime and endless violence. And though every single one of these stories detail the victims’ history with the law, they fail to offer a discussion of the systemic poverty and violence ravishing black communities and pulling kids into a life of crime.
Still We Rise
There is no doubt that The Hate U Give is a political film, and that it was created to make people understand the severity of police brutality, and just how dangerous it is to be black in America.
It’s a film that bluntly exposes the historical, political and social context of the issues that plague black communities in the United States.
However, even with all its heartbreaking and horrific subject matter, the film still finds a way to depict black life, and black people, as beautiful, resilient and vivacious. For example, throughout the movie, we see the love that Starr’s parents have for her and her siblings; we see how a community, despite being broken, can come together, time and time again, to grieve and honor the life of their own.
And let’s not forget about little Sekani, the literal joy of the movie, who ultimately reminds us to be careful of the hate we give.