Facing race: "The Hate U Give," "All American"

Close to 20 years ago the ACLU released a report, "Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nation's Highways." It's not new. Neither, for that matter, is getting shot just for being black, too many times by police, on the flimsiest of excuses. But for too many people, there's no connection to those victims because the news audience does not see itself in the people who have been wronged.

This is where the movie The Hate U Give, and the thematically similar third episode of the CW drama All American, titled "i," become important. Each takes its time to let us know the characters, to see lives, to understand fears -- before we see the terrible wrongs done to them. Although they are fictional, the characters force us to look at the real world. And it does not do it through allegory -- the way, for instance, Supergirl is a prolonged discourse on immigration -- but by direct presentation of incidents which should dishearten any audience.

The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman Jr. and adapted by the late Audrey Wells from Angie Thomas's young-adult novel, is the story of Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg), a high-school student who navigates between Garden Heights, her lower-class, poor, black neighborhood where drugs and a gang are common, and the wealthy, mainly white school where her parents send her and her half-brother to break free of some of the problems back home. 

Starr's father, Maverick* (Russell Hornsby), knows the problems well; while he owns the community grocery store, he is also a former member of the King Lords gang that runs the local drug trade, an ex-convict and someone schooled in the principles of the Black Panthers and how best to -- quietly -- deal when stopped by the police. Starr's mother Lisa (Regina Hall) is less openly fretful, but she knows the risks. She, like Maverick, knows how dangerous gang leader King (Anthony Mackie) can be -- although Maverick has an uneasy truce with King, and the extended Carter family include's Lisa's police-officer brother Carlos (Common).

 At the same time, though, Starr has to navigate her school, and the white kids who have their own idea of what blackness is, and no clue about her life in Garden Heights; so she's a different Starr there, and keeps her white boyfriend Chris (KJ Apa)** away from her home and family.

Starr does pretty well at separating her selves -- even though her neighborhood friends are skeptical about her white schooling -- until she attends a neighborhood party and runs into her childhood friend, Khalil (Algee Smith), now a dealer for King. As they drive home from the party, a police officer pulls them over. Starr goes right into her father's lessons -- hands on the dashboard, no arguing  -- where Khalil questions the police stop and does not take the situation seriously. The result: the officer kills Khalil after mistaking a hairbrush in the young man's hand for a gun.

What follows involves the public response to Khalil's killing and how it is handled, Starr's questioning what she should do, the danger of exposing King's business (since Khalil worked for him), how Starr's two communities react to the murder -- and what it means to her own dueling identities.

That's a long explanation of the first part of the movie, but all those details give you an idea of how much we know about Starr (though we, and she, still have much to learn in the movie) when disaster comes to her life. After Khalil's death as well, we see the rippling of emotions and the failures of people in her world. (The title of the film, and the book, comes from an acronym, THUGLIFE, attribute to 2Pac: The Hate U Give Little Infants F--k Everybody.") Because we get to know her, her plight resonates.

All American is similar, though less horribly tragic, by spending a couple of episodes introducing its sizable cast of characters before having its own DWB incident. The series focuses on Spencer James (Daniel Ezra), a football star in lower-class South Los Angeles who gets a chance at better exposure and bigger stardom when he's recruited by a Beverly Hills high school coach, Billy Baker (Taye Diggs). To meet residency rules, Spencer moves in with Baker, whose son Jordan (Michael Evans Behling) is also on the football team -- and not thrilled to see his father take more interest in Spencer than in Jordan.

In addition to its soapier aspects, though, All American reflects on race and class in its characters' lives. Spencer, like Starr, has to find the balance in himself while holding onto two places at once, while not entirely accepted in either. Jordan, in the same episode, gets a taste of what Spencer feels when he attends a cookout in Spencer's neighborhood.

Then, as Spencer and Jordan are driving one night, they get pulled over. Spencer knows the drill, promptly putting his hands on the dash of Jordan's car. Jordan, privileged and biracial, argues with the police about being stopped. He and Jordan end up on the sidewalk, handcuffed and taken into custody. Jordan, as does Billy, who has not had the talk with Jordan that Spencer and Starr have long since memorized.

If this had been in the first episode of All American, it might have felt different, because the characters would still be strangers to us. By the third, we have seen them in a variety of situations and behaviors. However much we do or don't like them, we are getting to know them, even to care about them. So when the hammer of injustice lands on them, it should hurt us, too.

As a series, All American has more story to tell, and we'll see how that goes. I hope more that young people see The Hate U Give. Audiences generally should appreciate the storytelling, the many ideas and the terrific acting, highlighted by Stenberg and Hornsby. The lessons, though, should be given to the young, both the black youth who may have their own encounters with police, and the whites who need to see how to think about that.

"The Hate U Give" is in theaters now. "All American" returns on Nov. 7 on The CW. The third episode, "i," is available via On Demand and cwtv.com.

*Maverick Carter has echoes here in Northeast Ohio, since it's also the name of LeBron James's friend and business partner.

**Another sign of our messed-up racial attitudes: The actor originally hired to play Chris was fired when video of him using the n-word popped up -- and some fans of that actor turned their ire against Angie Thomas.