Whole Class: The Hate U Give Discussions

I think that Starr finding her voice is a central theme in this novel and plays a significant role in the coming-of-age-aspect of this book. Accordingly, I think that Starr is on a continuous journey to find her voice, which peaks near the end of the novel during the protests. Starr begins to find her voice online through Tumblr, which readers know about early on with Starr's sharing of a post about Emmett Till, which causes conflict between her and Hailey several times. Moreover, Starr gives her statement to the police and shares about the Khalil she knew on Tumblr, in an attempt to humanize him to the greater public (205). It's important to note that after Khalil is murdered, fear is an important factor that keeps Starr relatively silent about the shooting. These sentiments are reinforced when Maverick is stopped by the police and treated worse once the cops realize that he is Starr's dad and that she is the witness (193).
Moreover, I think that Starr really uncovers her voice during the protests because she is surrounded by people who share similar feelings and frustrations as her after the court decision is announced, as she says, “people say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too.” (393). Starr feels a sense of community with the people around her, sharing their anger over the decision. “My anger is theirs and theirs is mine.” (393). She’s mad about systematic racism and how it is such a significant part of policing in the US and I think that the fact that she is surrounded by a community of people is what helps her really use her voice. In the past, Starr has felt discouraged from using her voice from people like Hailey; however, I think that having the support of others that she receives when speaking at the end of the book helps to validate the fact that Starr’s voice is her biggest weapon and that it matters.
On the topic of the riots, it appears that they are a response to people not feeling heard and undervalued. While the riots are intense and grow increasingly tense and violent, I think that they are a justified response from people who largely feel ignored on a systematic level. This is not to say that the violence is appropriate but, rather, that it is difficult to be heard in a society that actively ignores you. In this way, what are people supposed to do to share their concerns and frustrations when this is their reality? Regarding the looting, I think Devante explains this best when he explains that the McDonalds and pawnshop also did not treat his family well (397). In this way, it seems that the anger of some of the protestors spread so that it was no longer targeted at the police but, rather, at every system and business that treated them unfairly. Again, I think that tensions reached a boiling point for many in this part of the book and people wanted to fight against an entire system and society that appears to be working against them.

Starr comes to find her voice at the end of the novel when she realized that her talking to the grand court was not successful in bringing justice to Khalil’s death. Starr tried to use her voice while protecting her identity and followed the standard procedures of the criminal justice system, talking to detectives, going on the grand jury, and obtaining legal counsel but unfortunately, the criminal justice system is not created to protect the marginalized and this is illustrated in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give.
Starr begins to find her voice in situations that at first glance seem insignificant but were important factors in Starr finding the power of her voice. On page 130, Starr first calls Hailey out for acting racist. In this scene, Starr begins to abandon her fear of being the ‘angry black girl” (pg. 130) from Garden Heights and sticks up for herself. Development in Starr finding her voice is evident throughout the novel from the day after Khalil’s death. Starr is working at the store with Maverick when Mr. Lewis comes in and begins to talk about Khalil’s relationship with King. (Pg. 47) Starr stays quiet despite the anger this causes. As the labeling of Khalil as a drug dealer continues Starr creates a Tumblr blog called "The Khalil I Know" (pg. 200) This was Starr’s initiative to break the stigma of justifying Khalil’s death. Starr’s voice gets louder as the media pushes to justify the actions of officer One-Fifteen that ultimately resulted in the death of Khalil. Khalil was labeled as a thug, a drug dealer, a danger whereas in the interview with One-Fifteens father the officer is painted as a perfect member of society. (Pg. 238) This was the push Starr needed to freely speak on the news. She knows her voice for Khalil had to be louder than One-Fifteens fathers. Thinking out all her words and actions is a big aspect of Starr’s personality, but during this interview, she abandons that; she abandons what Williamson Starr would do and speaks about things her and Ms. Ofrah had not discussed and she abandons everything Garden Heights Starr learned not to do like dry snitching and taking a jab at the cops by asking if he wishes he had shot her too. (pg.277) Her need for justice becomes a bigger influence than her own safety.
Starr’s voice finally breaks free when the grand jury decides not to punish officer One-Fifteen. Starr’s decision to riot is fueled by an array of emotions and she realizes there is nothing more she can do. She did everything she was supposed to and instead of justice for Khalil, protection for One-Fifteen was granted. I think this is the motivation for many protests and riots in our society. People are angry, sad, frustrated, and fearful that it will be them next, it will be their children, parents, friends. You can do everything right and continue bringing these cases to the justice system and receive no progress, no justice. Police brutality does not only affect people in singles but in the masses, pain, grief, and anger are all shared values in which motivate the masses to protest. Media production and the criminal justice system only allow you to hear what they want and are designed to further continue marginalizing the marginalized. Rioting and protesting is a way people can express these feelings of pain, demand change, and bring a new perspective to why they’re fighting that isn’t controlled by the media.

When Starr gets to Carnation street where the shooting happened, she can see Ms Ofrah and the rest of Just Us for Justice protesting holding the hairbrushes in the air chanting "A hairbrush is not a gun". She can see the shrine for Khalil and she knows she wants to do something. She has been told throughout the book by Ms Ofrah that her voice is her weapon so she decides to use it watching the peaceful protest happen while the cops continue to threaten them. I think when you are trying to get a point across while peacefully protesting and still, nobody is listening and the cops are still threatening you, anger spreads fast. I can understand how hard it would be to keep the frustration and anger at bay when it appears nobody is listening to you, so it turns to violence to get a rouse out of the police officers. It is a group mentality of anger and if one person starts, more will join. In the novel even DeVante is ready to set fires and burn buildings down to cope with his anger since other people are, the idea even crosses Starr's mind for a brief moment.

I think that Starr has a hard time coming to terms with finding her voice because of a few things that circle around the theme of her feelings of being alone.
When she was young, her best friend died - only she and Khalil could relate to each other. Khalil died, she could relate to herself because her other friend died before Khalil, but nobody else could relate to her because Khalil was the only one that related to her, and he died. Her white friends could not relate because they were white and didn't have any friends die from a police shooting, or a criminal shooting. While her black friends could relate to the pain of losing Khalil and her other friend, Natasha, they could not relate to seeing someone get murdered. (At least this is what we can assume since Starr never found anyone who could relate to her, so even if anyone from the community could relate to her, their presence wasn't known, which still made Starr feel alone.)

So, she was alone. She was unique, with only herself to relate to because her experiences were not experienced with anyone else other than Khalil. When he died, she felt alone, and it can be hard to speak up when trauma has happened to someone repeatedly and nobody else can fully understand. She may also have not spoken up because she felt that she alone could not change the system, and to try would only be harming herself more by putting herself in danger of police, and the criminal justice system, the media, and her relationships with her white friends at school, as well members of in her community.

I think she found her voice once April Ofrah came into the picture. Until that point, she was just coping with Khalil's death, and even though she was blowing up Tumblr with BLM matters and news of Emmett Till, she never spoke out to Maya about it until much later, when the pressure became too much and Maya went from being passively racist to passive-aggressively racist. When Starr met April, she finally had someone who may not have been able to relate to her but was someone who could encourage her, empower her, and someone who was a role model because she fought for black people's rights as a lawyer and an advocate. Once April met Starr, she knew it was important to guide her, and so she got her an interview on TV with the press. Starr needed baby steps to speak out because 1) She had never spoken out about these issues outside of social media, and 2) there was still the issue of danger. If you alone are speaking out, you become an easy target.

When Starr's class left school to "protest", and many of them used that as an excuse to skip class, including her friend Maya, she refused to follow along. This in its own way was protesting the protest because the majority of kids weren't protesting for the right reasons. So all students who stuck inside and worked with Starr, actually kinda protested the protest with her. Small stuff like that, speaks big volumes and Starr gained confidence from this.

Once the rioting occurred at the end of the novel, Starr had been through two deaths, a court case that failed her, and interrogations that accused her and Khalil of his own death. There were people in the streets upset, and rioting was occurring and tear gas was tossed by police officers, and at this point, Starr has everything she needs to speak out 1) an audience willing to listen to her, back her up, and be witnesses, 2) a target audience all gathered in the same place at once - making it easy for her to talk to them all and making it hard for them to deny that she spoke out or that they knew this was an issue since there were many witnesses, and 3) she has a support system that was rooting for her (such as Seven, Chris, April, etc.)

So as perfectly summed up by the video that Minahil shares, people loot because they feel it is their best chance to have a good livelihood, which in its own way violates Article 25 of the UDHR since they do not have an adequate livelihood if they need to loot clothes, food, money, technology, (that one could argue is a necessity in order to use as a safe network to contact friends/family/emergency workers/etc.)

Others may loot as a form of punishment - kinda like the Bible story version where if Jews spilled blood on their doorsteps, God knew to pass their homes to target the Egyptians. Similar to that story, in the novel black businesses bordered up their doors to show they are with the protestors and not against and to ask for no harm unto them. Looters often exploit businesses that have proven time and time again to exploit the looters. For example, looters may rob a Walmart because they feel that Walmart doesn't respect black employees and needs to be taught a lesson.

Here is an actual issue involving Walmarts racism that was written this past June!
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/walmart-exploits-black-lives-while-paying-lip-service-black-lives-ncna1231493

I think people riot and loot in general as a form of "rough justice" which is discussed in criminology. According to Colins Dictionary on the definition, "If you describe someone's treatment or punishment as rough justice, you mean that it is not given according to the law."
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rough-justice

So, for those who riot or loot, they do so because they cannot seem to catch a break, all else has failed, and they still have not gotten their justice, so they take matters into their own hands. If corporations do wrong and get punished by the courts, they are fined a large sum. If corporations do wrong and are not punished by the courts, then looters may feel they need to provide their own justice. The businesses will still lose a large sum of money, it would just be in their products and not their bank accounts. If people do wrong and get punished by the courts, they have to do time, pay a fine, do community service, etc. It's trickier to provide an analogy with people because you can only punish corps and businesses with money. People have multiple punishments at their disposal. So, when rioters make noise, damage property, and give speeches, and become abusive (which is rarely), then this is the last resort they had, and they probably already tried to go through the media and the courts and failed. Peaceful protesting will simply not work because it has been tried and failed, and so people take to the streets.