Example of Discrimsnation in The Hate U Give

Imagine if you were to be mistreated due to the color of your shirt or hair. This is what's happened in the past and what's happening right now. The book The Hate you Give is about young kids that live in the ghetto that get mistreated and discriminated against by the outside world because of the color of their skin. During the Holocaust jewish people and minority groups got killed based on their race, ethnicity, and gender. These examples prove that race, ethnicity and gender affect how authority handles issues of justice because authority figures treat minorities more unfairly than white people and men because of the bias they have learned from society.

In the U.S justice from law enforcement is still dependent on race. In the book The Hate You Give a young man named Khalil gets shot after a white officer pulled him over. Khalil was driving and his friend Starr was a passenger, after they get pulled over, Khalil asks the officer why he was pulled over, the officer gets mad at this and forces him out of the car, and pats him down. Khalil turns his back on the officer to ask Starr if she was okay, and then the officer shoots him in the back multiple times. After the shooting Starr says “ I've seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose “ (Thomas 34 ). Starr is stating how if Khalil was white the officer pulling them over would not have resulted in a death. This piece of evidence shows injustice because of the racial biases that police officer had caused a quick reaction of him killing an innocent man. This was truly an unjust because a young man lost his life, didn't have a weapon on him, did not resist, didn't do anything wrong, and he is now dead. Later in the novel when Starr's father is very upset over the loss that the whole community is suffering he says “You said it yourself, he thought Khalil is a drug dealer….A thug. Why he assume that tho? What? By looking at khalil? Explain that, Detective” (Thomas 52). In this quote Starr's father is saying how the police officer assumed since Khalil was black he was a drug dealer and a thug, simply based of his appearance. This evidence is showing injustice again, because of how the news and media are now portraying Khalil as if it would somehow justice his death. As if him being shot would be more okay as long as he was a thug and drug dealer. This is important because the news are sending the message that the value of your life is not as important if your have dark skin or have made mistakes in life. In the U.S the way justice issues are currently handled are still impacted by what color your skin is.

In the world there is a long history of minorities being mistreated and discriminated by authority figures. A well known example of this would be the Holocaust during the years of 1933 through 1945, the german government and nazi parties both led by Hitler, tried to murder every single jewish person. In addition 1 million people who belonged to minority groups were also killed. The first example is showing the authority in germany being extremely cruel to jewish people “Passed laws that took away rights from Jews. Jews & other so-called inferior races/people isolated (e.g., forced into ghettos, made to wear yellow star)”(History Slides). This is stating that german government and nazis strongly believed that jewish people and other minorities did not deserve to have rights, and that they also deserved to be isolated from the rest of society. The Nazis took away all rights from the Jewish people and punished them because….This evidence is showing complete injustice because all authority figures in Germany are believing and following Nazi ideology and their biases against minorities. The Jews were the perfect scapegoats for the Nazis, due to their religion and ethnicity, and the fact that they made up only 1 percent of germany's population. Another piece of evidence that shows authority handling justice cases with bias is shown from information from history class “These people thought that Jews, Roma, chronically ill, political opponents, members of the LGBTQ community and other targeted groups were vermin and should be extinguished. They believed that they were doing a good deed by killing these people.” This quote is saying how strongly Nazis and German authority believed that all minority groups should be killed off because they make the world a worse place just because their gender race or ethnicity might be different. This evidence means that not only do minority groups and jewish people not deserve rights but that they deserve to die, this is showing huge injustice. This matters because their are still genocides happening around the world , there are still messages that are discriminatory being spread around the world causing biasses.

In conclusion, race, ethnicity and gender affects how authority handles issues of justice because authority figures treat minorities more unfairly than white people and men because of the biass they have learned from society. My evidence showed cases in which people lost their lives from completely different situations, but they both have one thing in common, they lost their lives at the hands of authority. This is relevant to our lives today because cases of injustice caused by what authority figures still happen to this day. Their are still black people being shot without probable cause, their are still police officers acting with excessive force, there is still authority figures that violate people's rights. Race ethnicity and gender all play a factor in how white authority handles a case whether they know it or not. Whether it was a bias they had learned from society they often mistreat people who are different.