Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race is a 2016 memoir about growing up Black in a mostly white suburb of Sydney, Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. Covering her early childhood to the end of high school, Clarke details the near-constant racist bullying she endured against the backdrop of a changing political climate.
After detailing a present-day incident in which a stranger shouts racist abuse at her, Clarke recounts how her Jamaican father, a maths professor, and Guyanese mother, an actor, migrated from London to Sydney in 1976. Clarke and her brother and sister grow up in the majority-white suburb of Kellyville. While Clarke loves learning and being in school, the racist taunts of bullies hamper her enjoyment and she wishes she were white, if only to fit in. As she grows older, Clarke acts out, getting in trouble in school, and her anger comes out in bruises and scratches she self-inflicts while asleep. In addition to the prejudice-focused anecdotes, Clarke includes more comic scenes, such as when she invents a supposedly traditional tribal African dance routine and performs it on Multicultural Day. The memoir ends with Clarke recalling how her father abandoned the family to live with a white woman with whom he'd been conducting a secret affair.
Addressing themes of trauma, racial discrimination, internalized racism, and the impact of political leadership, Clarke's memoir shows how the pain of discrimination can linger in a person's body and mind, just as discriminatory policies leave a legacy that affects a society even after the laws have been changed.
