The Hate Race Summary

Maxine is a Black girl who is growing up in Sydney, Australia during the end of the 20th century. She was born to Bordeaux and Cleopatra Clarke, a Jamaican-English mathematician and a Guyanese-English actress, in 1985. Bordeaux and Cleopatra moved to Sydney to avoid an increasingly volatile racial climate in their shared hometown of London, but struggled with racism as soon as they arrived in Australia. Even so, they stayed and settled in a majority-white suburb called Kellyville. Maxine has two siblings: an older sister named Cecelia and a younger brother named Bronson.

Maxine enjoys a peaceful early childhood in her neighborhood, but she learns from a young age that her Blackness sets her apart from her peers. In preschool, she faces bullying from a girl named Carlita Allen, who constantly insults Maxine’s skin color and her curly hair. Carlita also bullies Maxine’s friend Bella due to her lisp, which prompts her to confront Carlita in front of Carlita’s mother. When Carlita’s mother chastises Maxine as a “nasty little black girl” and forces her to walk into school hand-in-hand with a smug Carlita, Maxine experiences deep anger at racist mistreatment for the first time.

When Maxine enters primary school, she continues to struggle with racism from her peers as well as her teachers’ complicity in failing to address the bigotry of other students. For example, when she is Student of the Week and has a Q&A with her classmates, both her classmates and her teacher ask her invasive questions about her race and upbringing, and the comment card she gets from her classmates contains shallow comments about her Blackness—with the exception of a note from her best friend Jennifer, which talks extensively about Maxine’s good qualities and helps Maxine realize how empowering words can be. However, even her friendship with Jennifer becomes strained when, after Maxine and Bronson are harassed by boys on the bike track, Jennifer and her brother run away rather than standing up for them.

Maxine’s experiences with racism lead her to be overjoyed when patches of her skin grow paler, as she believes that she is turning white. However, she is actually developing vitiligo, which leaves white patches on her face. This leads to her enduring more harassment at school, with many of her classmates calling her “Patch,” the name of one of the student’s dogs. In grade two, she realizes the boys in her class find her ugly when she never gets chased by the boys during the students’ game of “Catch and Kiss,” which further destroys her self-esteem. It is also during this time that Maxine begins to learn about the history of violence against Black people, especially the enslavement of Jamaicans and the subjugation of Aboriginal Australians. Maxine does a project on Jamaica that earns her the title of dux (valedictorian) at her primary school graduation, but it’s a bittersweet victory due to her choosing to sanitize Jamaica’s history and avoid talking about its history of racism.

In high school, Maxine gains her best friend, Selina, who is a steadfast ally against her racist classmates. However, Maxine also faces more aggressive racism, particularly from a white supremacist boy named Greg Adams who sets out to terrorize all the people of color in the school. The increased harassment leads Maxine to suffer psychologically; she starts scratching herself in her sleep, and she also gets disciplined for behavioral issues as she starts to retaliate against her bullies. However, the school counselor does not take her seriously, asking her if anything’s wrong aside from “a bit of teasing.” As a result, Maxine does not trust the school to advocate for her. Her pain also manifests in her lashing out at other people of color, particularly her Indian classmate Bhagita, whom she insults and threatens after Bhagita makes Maxine feel insecure about the microbraids she got in order to fit in better at school.

Despite her struggles, Maxine also experiences social and personal development as she moves through high school. She gets her first boyfriend, a friend from young childhood named Mick; although the two eventually drift apart, Maxine remembers him fondly for being the first boy to make her feel desirable. She also joins debate team, which is a healthy outlet for her anger, but she eventually leaves after the competition dictates that her team has to argue in favor of Australia Day. After debate team, Maxine turns to public speaking, which she doesn’t like as much but which she is quite good at.

As Maxine reaches the end of high school, things calm down due to many of her bullies leaving school for trade school or work. She starts dating Marcus, whom she first met through debate team. She has a more serious relationship with him, but they break up after he subjects her to multiple racist microaggressions. She continues to hang out with Selina, and the two participate in the school’s Multicultural Day; Selina is legitimately good at bellydancing, but Maxine simply makes up “tribal dances” as an excuse to skip class and hang out with Selina. She gets away with it due to her teachers’ reductive assumptions about Black culture.

Towards the end of the memoir, both Maxine and her sister Cecelia have their high points in their adolescence: Maxine is cast as Countess Olivia in her school’s production of Twelfth Night, and Cecelia does extremely well in local modelling competitions. However, the Clarke family is fractured when Bordeaux abruptly moves out, leaving the family for his long-term affair partner. At the end of the book, Maxine reflects on the long and painful history of her family.