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Chapter 12
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Hate Race, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racial Discrimination in Australia
Racism, Childhood, and Loss of Innocence
Race and Beauty Standards
Injustice and Complicity
The Power of Words
Summary
Analysis
On the first day of grade seven, Selina’s mom drives Maxine and Selina to school. They have separate homerooms, with Maxine being in the same one as Cecelia. When she enters, the students gossip about how much she looks like Cecelia, even though the two look nothing alike. A group of older boys threaten Maxine for staring at them, and she realizes they are more hostile than her primary school tormenters. Later, the grade seven girls are given a tour by grade eleven girls, who are authoritative and catty. At the library, they call it “Chinatown,” since, according to them, only Asian and disabled students eat there. Maxine wishes she could enter the library, and she thinks that “Chinatown” might be a good fit for her. She soon becomes acclimated to her new school.
Maxine’s first day at high school quickly establishes it as an extremely hostile environment for people of color: not only Black people, but the Asian students there as well. However, it’s indicative of how much Maxine has learned to expect racism that she still manages to acclimate to her school and even accepts that “Chinatown,” the area for outcasts (or, perhaps more accurately, societally marginalized students) could be a haven for her rather than a place to be avoided due to the stigma surrounding it.
Themes
