This quote comes from Chapter One of Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give.
Starr Carter is talking about her experience as a student at a nearly all-white school called Williamson Prep, despite living in the nearly all black Garden Heights.
This quote summarizes the primary tension Starr feels at Williamson. Her friends and classmates there love consuming black art and culture in the form of anything from rap music to African American slang. This is what Starr means when she says it’s “dope to be black.” White teens enjoy black art and culture because they think it’s cool and, by extension, makes them cool.
The second part of the quote, though, reveals that white teens’s love of black art and culture does not necessarily translate to a love for black people. In other words, black people cannot depend on these consumers of their culture to stand up as allies against the injustices faced within the black community. Instead, it is more likely for these people to cast off their associations with black culture the moment they are asked to help right the wrongs of white supremacy.
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