In order to address violence against the black community for Black History Month, the Kennesaw State African-American Student Alliance hosted a screening of the 2018 film “The Hate U Give” on Thursday, Feb. 21.
The critically-acclaimed film is about a 16-year-old African-American girl who witnesses a police officer shoot her best friend, prompting her to fight against the injustice that plagues her community.
AASA President Okenna Okpareke said the goal of the screening was to get audience members to reflect on the injustices portrayed, to reduce ignorance around issues of racial injustice and to build empathy and a sense of community among those who attended.
“I’m most definitely a huge advocate of wearing other people’s shoes and putting yourself in their position,” Okpareke said. “Ignorance has the base word of ignore, and people can ignore the relevance of things going on in the world for their own comfort. Even though this didn’t happen to you, it could have been your sister, brother, cousin or close family member. Everybody should have a chance to live a fair life, free of all types of ridicule, discrimination or harassment.”
Okpareke hopes that showing “The Hate U Give” helped people understand how to be better allies to marginalized groups.
“I feel like [the film is] real and relevant,” Okpareke said. “It is people of college and high school age, both African-American men and women, being unfairly treated by the media and law enforcement.”
The screening of the film took place just days after screenshots of a group chat started by KSU students gained attention on social media. Students used the group chat to share hateful and discriminatory messages, targeting people of color and other marginalized groups.
“I would see it as the same issue, but with different players,” Okpareke said regarding the timeliness of the screening in relation to the group chat messages.
“Even though this didn’t resort to physical altercations, it could be influencing other groups of people to want to act out to get their point across.”
The AASA was created in the 1980’s by Dr. Jerome Ratchford to help strengthen the African American community at KSU.
“I’d describe it as an organization on campus, but in a deeper way it is a family unit,” Okpareke said. “It ushered in a culture, a place of belonging and a home away from home for a lot of African-Americans and other minorities.”
The AASA is involved in hosting and taking part in several different events and activities involving the Kennesaw community.
“We have things like breast cancer awareness, campus safety and drug awareness,” Okpareke said. “We also [help] with black finance and other things to help allow students to be productive members of society after graduation.”
To find out more about the AASA and future events or activities, visit their Owl Life page at owllife.kennesaw.edu/organization/aasa.
