Viewing The Hate U Give (THUG)by Angie Thomas through Stefancic and Delgado’s Critical Race Theory illuminates moments when the main character of THUG, Starr struggles between black nationalism and assimilation.
Through Thomas’s representative consciousness of Starr, the reader is able to witness her actively choose to assimilate at her majorly white school, “I just have to be normal Starr at normal Williamson and have a normal day. That means flipping the switch in brain so I’m Williamson Starr. Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang — if a rapper would say it she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her ‘hood’. ” (Delgado & Stefancic 66; Thomas 73). Additionally, Thomas represents Starr’s consciousness as she struggles with the implications of assimilating, writing, “And I know, I’m sitting her next to my white best friend, but it’s almost as if I’m giving Khalil, Daddy, Seven and every other black guy in my life a big, loud ‘fuck you’ by having a white boyfriend.”; instead of assuming more nationalist behaviors, as she becomes ware that “Nationalists…. look with skepticism on members of their groups who date, marry, or form close friendships with whites…” (Delagado & Stefancic 69; Thomas 107).
The struggle with these differing forms of racial representation and identity are also prevalent throughout the book in the polar representations of Starr’s father figures, “Uncle Carlos” and “Daddy”, who occupy opposing positions: Uncle Carlos assimilates, while Daddy is a black nationalist. Uncle Carlos is a detective, who knows the white officer that shot Khalil and pushes his family to move out of Garden Heights into a “nicer” neighborhood, and is fine with Starr dating someone who is white. Starr’s “Daddy”— who is extremely suspicious of Uncle Carlos— supports Malcolm X over MLK, attributes a black race to the religious figure of Jesus Christ, refuses to leave the neighborhood of “Garden Heights” instead running his own business there, and forbids Starr from dating white boys. Each of these figures mobilize Critical Race Theory’s own characterizations of Nationalism and Assimilation: William and Jamal.
Through Thomas’s representations of these typologies of racial and ethnic identity, the reader is able to begin to understand the internal conflict someone deciding between the two representations of their own identity must endure. Starr’s coming of age story is complicated by the additional need to define herself within the binary types of identity proposed by her two father figures, eliciting empathy and sympathy from an audience who may or may not have had to deal with the same process.
