Total Pageviews

Monday, January 15, 2018

Book Review: The Hate You Give



            I’ve just read the book that all white people living in America in the year 2018 must read.  Must.
            The book is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. 
            She tells a story of a young, unarmed black man shot and killed by a police officer in the inner city.  This is a story of a quest for justice when the unthinkable happens.  But it is much more than that. 
            This is the story of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray and Philando Castille and so many other unarmed black man killed by the law enforcement.  As the book shows (not tells), not all police officers are racist.  Not all police officers killed unarmed black youth.  Many, maybe most, want to ‘protect and serve.’  But black people in the city have way too many bad encounters with the police.  This book shows how one such bad encounter looks from the perspective of communities are majority black. 
            This story gives the white reader a glimpse into a world he/she cannot understand.  I have not lived in the inner city.  I have not lived in communities like the one Thomas has created.  If white readers would just take the time to read the story, enter this world, fall in love with the protagonist Starr, the witness to the shooting, and see the humanity of the community we brazenly dismiss as the ‘hood,’ our perspective would quickly change and our attitude along with it. 

            Thomas educated the white reader (the white person willing to be taught) by showing, not telling, what the inner city, mostly black world is like.  I am grateful to her for doing that.  I am also grateful to my friend Deidre Riggs who insisted I read this book.  Now, I pass that insistence on to you.  Read it!  Then, join in the struggle for equity and justice.  

1 comment: