No City for Young Boys: The Hate U Give, When They See Us and African American Youth

Abstract

Contradictions between precious ideals and social realities are often handled by locating the problems of inequality in a limited setting, so that the rest of social life will not be disturbed. Racial inequality in America, starting with slavery, is concretely expressed in the troubled relations between agencies of social control, like the police, and racial minority communities. Two recent movies, The Hate U Give and When They See Us, deal with issues of extreme injustice in contacts between African American young men and the police who patrol their communities. The history of movies and real events shows these issues recurring. In spite of efforts to mend the difficult relationship, many recent scandals have raised alarms for the continuation of progress in race relations. Police shootings of unarmed young men and wrongful convictions of innocent young men have led to the “Black Lives Matter” movement and a recent outpouring of movies of protest by African American moviemakers.