Maxine Beneba Clarke
Maxine Beneba Clarke is the narrator and protagonist of The Hate Race, her memoir. Born in Sydney, Australia to Black British parents of Jamaican and Guyanese descent, Clarke grows up in the majority-white suburb of Kellyville. From pre-school on, Clarke encounters casual, overt, and systemic racism as she grows up being one of the very few people of color in her white middle-class suburb. With little to no help from authority figures at school, Clarke is subjected to near-constant bullying and harassment. Clarke comments that trauma often manifests in her skin, her stress showing in patches of vitiligo, keloid scars, or bruises and scratches she involuntarily inflicts on herself during sleep. As an adult with her own children, Clarke continues to experience racist abuse from strangers, and cannot help but find herself brought back to the helpless "can't-think freeze" instinct of her childhood.
Bordeaux "Bordy" Clarke
Bordy is Clarke’s father. Born in Jamaica, Bordy migrated to England with his parents, settling in the north London town of Tottenham. Bordy is the first in his family to receive a British university degree. A mathematics lecturer, Bordy takes a job in Australia in 1976 without ever having visited. Bordy causes a stir among his white Kellyville neighbors when he mows the lawn in a singlet and with his Afro out. An avid record collector, Bordy often listens to his stereo on his own. Bordy has an affair with a white coworker for several years before he moves out of the family home to live with her. Clarke discovers her father has left when she comes home and sees his records and stereo are missing.
Cleopatra Clarke
Cleopatra is Clarke's mother. Born in Guyana, Cleopatra moves with her family to London in the post-war Afro-Caribbean migration boom. Cleopatra is a renowned stage actor whose career suffers when she turns down an offer to star in a new run of a major production because she knows it would take her away from raising her children. Clarke depicts Cleopatra as elegant, supportive, level-headed, and good-humored. When her husband leaves her to live with his mistress, Cleopatra perseveres, making ends meet and eventually changing the locks so Bordy knows he isn't entitled to let himself into the house he abandoned whenever he likes.
Cecelia Clarke
Cecelia is Clarke's older sister. Unlike Clarke, Cecelia is lean and naturally athletic, becoming a star runner on the high-school track team. Clarke learns that some of the other students call Cecelia "Black Flash" behind her back. Cecelia is usually annoyed by her dorky younger sister, with whom she often resents being associated. As an older teenager, Cecelia enters the Model Quest competition and wins several runway modeling competitions. Cecelia loses the final to two white girls, but Clarke comments that everyone in the room knew she was the real winner.
Bronson Clarke
Bronson is Clarke's little brother. Born a few years after Clarke, Bronson grows up in the same suburb, often going out to play when Clarke does. When their father builds bicycles for them, Bronson and Clarke take them to the local BMX track only to be harassed by a group of racist white boys. The incident ends with Bronson somehow skinning his knee, perhaps from a rock one of the boys throws. When he gets older, Bronson becomes a troublemaker, spitting on a girl at school and tearing up the discipline letter he is sent home with.
Carlita Allen
Carlita Allen is a classmate and bully who is racist toward Clarke throughout primary school. Clarke first encounters Carlita in preschool. The day they meet, Carlita appraises Clarke cooly and points out that she is "brown." When Carlita's bullying becomes too much for Clarke, she denounces her as a bully in front of Carlita's mother. Carlita's mother calls Clarke a "very nasty little black girl" and forces her to apologize. Carlita's taunts continue as the girls get older, only ending when Carlita goes off to boarding school. The summer after primary school ends, Clarke runs into Carlita at the petrol station, discovering that Carlita has made friends with a non-white girl. Because of this, she pretends to be friends with Clarke in front of the new friend she hopes to impress.
Selina
Selina is Clarke's best friend. Selina has asthma, which becomes so bad in their first years of high school that Clarke is left to navigate social life alone for several months. When Clarke starts going steady with Mick, Selina does the same with Mick's friend, Jed. Selina takes belly-dancing lessons, and performs for the school as part of a school-wide multicultural display.
Michael "Mick" Callingham
Mick Callingham is Clarke's first boyfriend. Having played together as children in Kellyville, Mick and Clarke reconnect as teenagers at a local youth club evening. Mick is charming and comes off as a bad boy, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and always wearing a trench coat. Clarke only sees him on weekends and some weekday evenings because he goes to a Jesuit private school. When she invites him over, he says he'll never go to her house because he's seen her father out jogging and knows he is built like a truck. Clarke's relationship with Mick fizzles after he chooses to go out with his theater friends over her on the closing night of the show he stars in.
Marcus
Marcus is Clarke's second boyfriend. A fellow debate team member, Marcus pursues Clarke within their teenage friend group, and soon they are spotted around the school as an item. Clarke both appreciates and feels awkward when Marcus's parents, who are white, try to engage her in conversation by bringing up Martin Luther King Jr. and other subjects related to race. Clarke's interest in Marcus fades when he eats Golliwog Biscuits in front of her, dismissing her concern when she points out that the biscuits are racist. When he says her hand looks like a possum's paw, Clarke reacts strongly to being compared to an animal, and she steadily brings the relationship to an end.
Bhagita Singh
Bhagita Singh is a classmate who Clarke humiliates with racist taunts when Clarke is feeling insecure. When Clarke has her hair braided into micro-plaits, Bhagita says that poor women in India grow out and sell their hair to make extensions. To deflect the harassment of bullies who overhear, Clarke calls Bhagita a "curry muncher" and pretends to snip off her long black braid, as Clarke knows that not cutting one's hair is culturally significant to Sikhs. When Clarke attempts to apologize the next day, Bhagita refuses to hear it, and Clarke feels physically sick.
