Context
The Hate U Give shares a narrative befitting America’s political climate, where there is much controversy over racialized police brutality. The novel was published in 2017, following years of media coverage and public outrage regarding the treatment of black Americans by law enforcement officials in the United States. According to an article in the The Journal of Pan African Studies, 78 unarmed Black Americans were killed during altercations with law enforcement officials between 1999 and 2015 (Chaney & Robertson 2015). The same article highlights that 10-year-old black boys are more likely to be judged as guilty and less innocent than white children of the same age. The implicit and explicit prejudice against black Americans has sparked the Black Lives Matter Movement, where protests and online social activism are routinely organized to take action against systemic racism.
Angie Thomas initially conceptualized Starr’s experiences as a short story for a creative writing class at Belhaven University in Mississippi. Her inspiration came from the highly publicized death of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old black man who was fatally shot by a police officer. After graduating in 2015, she expanded the story into a novel following the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland under similar circumstances. (Anderson 2018). Thomas has stated that the novel was originally written as an outlet for her anger and frustration about the current state of affairs, but ultimately became a form of activism and an avenue to inspire hope (Walker Books & Thomas 2017). The purpose of the novel, according to Thomas, is to show “the human side of these cases" by inspiring empathy among readers (Epic Reads & Thomas 2018). Though the The Hate U Give is marketed toward a young adult audience, it has reached a diverse readership of all ages as a number one New York Times bestseller.
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The Challenge
On November 6th, 2017, Mr. Anthony Downs expressed his concerns about the novel during a board meeting held by the Katy District Independent School Board in Katy, Texas. A parent of students at Katy ISD, Mr. Downs argued that the book was inappropriate for junior high students due to its depiction of teenage drug use and explicit language. In response, superintendent Lance Hindt unilaterally ordered all copies of the novel to be removed from shelves within the school district. This decision breached protocol that requires all members of a committee to “review the challenged resource in its entirety” before formally reconsidering whether or not a book is appropriate for students (Texas Association of School Boards).