The Hate U Give

I find it hard to think that I have not reviewed this.  I had listened to an interview with Angie Thomas and found out that this book has been banned in many schools in the USA.  I have not read the book, but my daughter has, and has also watched the film.

I enjoyed the film.  I would have probably done what the police officer in the film did and shot the teenager armed with a hair brush, thinking that he was going for a gun. Needless to say, on this, my daughter and I disagree.  I do agree that the subsequent handcuffing of the sole witness was wrong, as was the attempted arrest of her father later in the film.  Also, it was very wrong of the police to ask the questions they did of those they had pulled over about drugs and gangs.  I also think that the way the film showed how the innocent man was demonised was all too accurate.

When it comes to the matter of blaming the man who has been killed, we saw that with George Floyd.  In essence, George Floyd was not a nice man.  But, he did not deserve to be murdered by the police.  When it came to the investigation, too many people focused on his past, as opposed to how the police acted based on the information they had at the time and the situation which was present. Even if the police knew about his past, his murder was inexcusable. 

I know that I differ from many both here and in the USA in that I think that the killing of some men of colour was understandable. And example of that in the UK was Mark Duggan, killed when transporting a gun which in all probability would have been used to kill someone black. But there is no doubt that too many black people in the USA are murdered and the police seem to ignore it. 

On a different matter, it was interesting to see that the main actress was of mixed race.  As anyone who has watched Jungle Fever by Spike Lee knows, this is a stereotype that is an issue in many films, fortunately not in either of the Black Panther ones.