George Tillman Jr. directs an intense drama on racial bias and systemic racism—right down to the way it influences individual experiences—in “The Hate U Give.” The film narrates the story of a young Black girl, Starr Carter, who is stuck between two very contrasting worlds: the almost all-Black neighborhood and the early all-White school she attends. The themes, in general, of racial injustice, police brutality, and the development of racial attitudes in youth are elaborated in ways that certainly provide a lively background for going more deeply into those subjects. I will show how psychological theories and research, mainly touching on the psychology of American racism, development in implicit attitudes, racial biases in parenting, and bias awareness in racial socialization, come to converge and bring out a better understanding of portrayed themes. As much as the psychological perspectives provide detailed insights into the systemic dimensions of racism, they could have limitations in capturing nuances illustrated by the individual experiences and emotional dimensions that the film brings out. The paper critically evaluates how far these psychological theories provide a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted themes and events presented in “The Hate U Give.”
“Psychology of American Racism (Roberts & Rizzo, 2020):”
The research by Roberts and Rizzo (2020) touched upon the interdisciplinary analysis of the controversial problem of racial biases in the United States. The seven factors found are a fresh way through which one can view racism within American society; that being Categories, Factions, Segregation, Hierarchy, Power, Media, and Passivism. In “The Hate U Give,” categories are vivid, such as organizing people into particular groupings. Characters face expectations of society as well as the racial stereotyping evident in society, which underlines the role played by such categorization in people’s perceptions and interactions. As Starr tries to negotiate her identity between a primarily black neighborhood and a primarily white school, the film exhibits the factional loyalty and intergroup competition that Roberts and Rizzo wrote about. In addition, the third force identified by Roberts and Rizzo is the force of segregation, and the film dramatically depicts its impacts. Group contact deprivation consolidates racist perceptions, inclinations, and beliefs. Starr’s experiences of negotiation between heavily black and white-saturated communities placed light on the effect of segregation on one’s beliefs, as well as on the beliefs of a society. Moreover, Roberts and Rizzo mentioned the theme of hierarchy in the movie, which is presented through power relations, particularly between the police and the African American society, again reproducing a hierarchical kind of organization that creates racial injustice.
“Implicit Attitudes Development (Baron & Banaji, 2006):”
Thus, Baron and Banaji (2006) are credited for adding a developmental dimension to race bias studies and attitudinal evaluations by addressing race evaluation in implicit attitudes development. Research on White American 6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, and adults implies an exciting asymmetry in development in the implicit and explicit attitudes toward race. In “The Hate U Give,” this development is reflected through Starr’s younger brother, whose implicit biases are the same as those of even the youngest age bracket. This sets the film as capturing the subtleties of bias adoption at its early stage, which underpins the urgency of interventions to address implicit bias development from a tender age. In addition, Baron and Banaji detected the attitude preference for the ingroup as stable, even as the attitudes became more equal with age. This deviation from development is mirrored in the character of Starr as she thinks about changing attitudes in response to traumatic events in her community, evoking internal conflict and cognitive dissonance. Interestingly, Nosek and the group of researchers further enlighten the development of characters in the film, even with the analogy of individual growth and attitude change over time.
“Racial Biases in Parenting (Scott et al., 2022):”
Scott et al. (2022) have illustrated just how complex parental beliefs and biases can be in the United States when it comes to racism within their study of White parents. Studies based on thousands of parents and their young children indicate an immense differential between the racial biases assumed by parents in their children and the natural biases reported in controlled conditions. This paradox mirrors the story in “The Hate U Give,” where it appears that her friend attending a white-dominant school somehow disowns the reality that her peers could be prejudiced or bigoted, reflecting a case of either over-optimism or denial of possible racial biases. The current study would highlight the need to target parental perceptions as an all-inclusive tack in opposition to racial biases in children. The study would introduce an intervention approach inclusive of exposure to an article about the nature, prevalence, and consequences of White children’s racial biases. In this regard, the film denotes a way of taking an intervention approach towards active conversations between the parents of Starr and the daughter to bring in racial biases that underlie raising the parents’ awareness and concerns as a catalyst to addressing children’s biases in order to equip them in living in a diverse society.
Quote 1: “Sometimes you can do everything right, and things will still go wrong. The key is never to stop doing right.” — Starr’s father.
Perry, Skinner, and Abaied’s (2019) study on racial socialization practices among White parents points out a critical but understudied dimension of communication about race with children. It is such that this line of research establishes an association between White parents’ awareness of bias and a willingness to engage in color-conscious racial socialization practices; this is in recognition that many researchers have indicated the importance of acknowledging issues of race as opposed to avoidance or denial through colorblindness. Importantly, results indicate a greater sense of awareness of bias by the parents to be associated positively with openness in discussions of racial matters with children. It further reveals the character dynamics drawn in the story of “The Hate U Give,” where Starr’s parents talk with their children concerning neighborhood struggles. What is more, the study brings forth that high color consciousness and low color blindness in racial socialization practices also relate to bias awareness. Parents who are racially aware are most likely to bring out issues related to race within their homes, thus pulling themselves away from colorblindness, where issues about race are underestimated. Furthermore, the film mirrors a similar perspective, whereby Starr’s parents are color-aware in how they address racial issues and encourage her to bring them to light and do something to change existing racial injustices.
“Quote 2: “What is the point of having a voice if you are gonna be silent in those moments you should not be?” – Starr.”
The research of Cooley et al. (2019) on racial biases in police-civilian interactions and, most notably, the amplification of biases toward black civilians in groups finds its substantiation in events in “The Hate U Give.” The movie echoes circumstances when the black community is provoked to rally against police harassment, and hence the collective effort to disturb the racial bias in policing outcomes as highlighted in the said research. The higher rates of frisks, searches, arrests, and use of force on Black people highlighted in the groups within the film imbue systemic racial biases within police work and create inherent tensions and injustices amid the characters’ struggles. The study enriches the exploration of systemic racism within “The Hate U Give,” representing experiences that members of marginalized groups go through and the need for comprehensive change to come.
“Quote 3: “Brave does not mean you are not scared. It means you go on even though you are scared.” – Starr’s mother.”
The research by Lee, Montgomery, and Lai (2024) into America’s racial framing through language finds consonance with the central theme of racial identity presented in the film. Starr’s struggle to harmonize self-identity with societal notions speaks of the study’s comprehensive exploration of the ideological connection of language with racial stereotypes. The fragile stereotype of Asians as more American fleshes out the treatment the film provides for how society sees differences in race.
“The Hate U Give” sensitively narrates how linguistic dimensions shape racial prejudices and perceptions. It plays with language as this force not to be reckoned with but, instead, working critically to establish American society’s racial framework. It is this dynamic in which Starr, in her journey, finds a microcosm of the more considerable discourse examined by Lee, Montgomery, and Lai, where language works as a way of perpetuating racial stereotypes and establishing hierarchies. The film underscores how subtle and obvious linguistic signals contribute significantly to the reification of ideas about race. In one of the most memorable scenes, it is not Starr but Maya, her Asian friend, who is stereotyped in the way detailed by Lee et al. There are even more stereotypes that are depicted through the character of Maya, in that she is stereotypically more ‘American’ in every sense than the Black people around her. It shows that racial prejudices run deeper than just the Black-White contrast. Such subtle portraiture layers the film’s inquiry into identity and social expectations. The two-dimensional framework by Lee et al., which positions the racial and ethnic minority groups on a continuum from superior to inferior based on their Americanness or foreignness, would appear to be mirrored in the struggle of the characters through the film to find a sense of themselves when all around them is a racial cauldron.
Starr struggles to fit in with the social norms and the imposed linguistic expectations when she is among her mostly Black community and when she is in her mostly White school. The movie quietly snatches how language sets perceptions of belonging and identity. The relevance of Lee et al.’s study is set against the theoretical background that one can understand how these dynamics work. The focus of the study on the connection between language and perceptions of Americanness suggests the widespread nature of these biases.
This exploration of psychological theories and research present in “The Hate U Give” has dramatically enriched the understanding of the complex themes of racial bias, systemic racism, and the development of racial attitudes. The backdrop of theories on the psychology of American racism, the development of implicit attitudes, racial biases in parenting, and awareness of biases in racial socialization has been a guide to analyzing other dynamics depicted in the film. These perspectives have thrown much light on the structural underpinning of racism, the developmental trajectory of biases, and the role of parenting in the making of attitudes among children. However, that makes it necessary to confess the lack of the ability to express the subtle personal experiences and emotional nuances the movie covers. Characters such as Starr Carter underscore that lived realities are not to be squeezed within psychological theories alone but include social, cultural, historical, and individual dimensions. While the psychological insights provide core foundational knowledge, now the issue is in upholding a much more holistic understanding—one that embraces the rich tapestry of individual narratives and emotional nuance that will pull out a broader spectrum of how such profound themes within “The Hate U Give” are translated.
Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). The Development of Implicit Attitudes. Evidence of Race Evaluations From Ages 6 and 10 and Adulthood. Psychological Science, 17(1), 53–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01664.x
Cooley, E., Hester, N., Cipolli, W., Rivera, L. I., Abrams, K., Pagan, J., Sommers, S. R., & Payne, K. (2019). Racial Biases in Officers’ Decisions to Frisk Are Amplified for Black People Stopped Among Groups, Leading to Similar Biases in Searches, Arrests, and Use of Force. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(6), 194855061987663. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619876638
Lee, M. H. J., Montgomery, J. M., & Lai, C. K. (2024, January 12). America’s racial framework of superiority and Americanness is embedded in natural language. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad485
Perry, S. P., Skinner, A. L., & Abaied, J. L. (2019). Bias Awareness Predicts Color Conscious Racial Socialization Methods among White Parents. Journal of Social Issues. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12348
Roberts, S. O., & Rizzo, M. T. (2020). The psychology of American racism. American Psychologist, 76(3). https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000642
Scott, K., Ash, T. L., Immel, B., Liebeck, M., Devine, P. G., & Shutts, K. (2022). Engaging White parents to address their White children’s racial biases in the Black‐White context. Child Development, 94(1), 74–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13840
Wells, A., & Thomas, A. (2018, October 19). The Hate U Give. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580266/