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See, last year a kid was murdered by a cop just a few streets away from my grandparents’ house. He was unarmed, but the grand jury decided not to charge the officer. There were riots and protests for weeks. Half the businesses in the Garden were either intentionally burned down by rioters or were casualties of the war.
This quotation, which comes at the beginning of Chapter Two as Bri arrives at the Ring, references the police murder of a Black teenager named Khalil in Angie Thomas’ previous book, The Hate U Give. By referring to the aftermath of the shooting as a “war,” Bri conveys the gravity of the events and the fact that, for the poor, Black residents of her neighborhood, many of whom are devastated by the effects of police brutality and other forms of systemic racism, the shooting and the riots were only one part of an ongoing race war. The neighborhood still bears the scars of Khalil's death, and so does Bri. She refers often to police violence in her songs and is acutely aware that white people’s perceptions of her as a Black girl could have violent or even fatal consequences for her. This comes to a head when she is physically assaulted by the security guards at her school, and she reflects that she doesn’t want to end up like the boy who died.
