Narrated in the first-person by the memoir’s author, Maxine Beneba Clarke, The Hate Race opens with a prologue in which Clarke is walking through suburban Melbourne with her daughter in a stroller. A young white man in a vehicle slows down to shout racist abuse at her, telling her to go back to her own country. The incident sits heavily with Clarke, who was born in Australia to Black British parents, who themselves are Afro-Caribbean descendants of West African victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Clarke worries about the prejudice her young son and daughter will endure as Black minorities going through the Australian school system.
Clarke recounts the details of how she came to be born in Sydney. The story, as her family tells it, is that her father's parents left Jamaica to settle in London in the post-WWII boom of Caribbean migration to the UK. Bordeaux "Bordy" Clarke earned a PhD in mathematics and married Clarke's mother, Cleopatra, a Guyanese-descended actress. Though Australia had long held a reputation for limiting non-white migration to the country, it seemed in the 1970s that the White Australia policy was being dismantled by progressive Labor politicians like Gough Whitlam. Fleeing the increasingly hostile political atmosphere of 1970s Britain, Bordy took a lecturer job at an Australian university in 1976. He and Cleopatra bought a house in the suburb of Kellyville and had three children: Cecelia, Maxine, and Bronson.
Clarke's childhood is in many ways idyllic, but she encounters racism when she starts preschool: Carlita Allen, a white girl, continually points out Clarke's brown skin and treats her with scorn. As more students join in the racist bullying, Clarke learns life is easier if she tries to make herself invisible. However, primary school teachers also contribute to her feelings of difference, getting angry when Clarke doesn't know how to answer the question of where her parents are from; to Clarke, they are from England.
But by the mid-1980s, Clarke's family sees increasingly more people of color in Australia, thanks to government policies that have encouraged multiculturalism and increased immigration. There are also breakthroughs in land rights campaigns for Indigenous Australians.
As Clarke gets older, she develops vitiligo, which leaves patches of light skin on her face. To stop the taunts, she begins wearing brown coverup, which creates more problems when she accidentally smears the brown makeup on library books and her possessions. Clarke recounts other instances in which her race singles her out for harassment, such as when she and her brother have rocks thrown at them by racist boys at the BMX track, or when a teacher says, "Well, that's what you are" after Clarke complains about a boy calling her "blackie." Her frustration and anger prompt Clarke to lash out, leading her to be sent to the principal for disciplining.
In grade six, Clarke discovers that her father's family members are descended from West African slaves while she is reading about Jamaica. The book's image of chained-up slaves carrying in a ship's hull while crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean disturbs Clarke, and she neglects to mention the colonial history of Jamaica in her project. She receives a 99.99% grade on it though, pushing her over the threshold to being the grade six valedictorian (Dux of the School).
In high school, the track coach assumes Clarke must be an excellent runner, telling her it is in her blood. While it's true that her sister Cecelia is a great runner, Clarke doesn't share the talent, despite trying to meet the coach's race-based expectations. In classes, the taunts of bullies become cruder and more violent, with jokes about Clarke being an animal or having AIDS. Clarke's stress manifests in bruises and scratches she involuntarily inflicts on herself when asleep. At fourteen, Clarke develops another skin issue: keloid scars. The lumps of scar tissue are like half-peanuts embedded in her skin, and there is nothing she can do but wear loose clothing to cover them up and hope they will go away.
Clarke dates her first boyfriend, Mick, until their relationship fizzles out. The bullies shift their tactics, slipping anonymous violent notes into her books. She hides the notes for a while, until the school finds out and tries to figure out who has been sending them. Eventually, they stop without Clarke ever learning who wrote them. Clarke briefly becomes a bully herself when she uses racist stereotypes to humiliate a Sikh girl named Bhagita, receiving kudos from the same boys who normally harass her. Clarke feels sick afterward, unable to accept that she has become what she hates. Clarke also has mixed feelings about the tactic she employs for winning debates for her team: quoting civil rights leaders no matter what point she is arguing.
In the last years of high school, Clarke dates Marcus, her second boyfriend. She is pleased that he isn't embarrassed to be seen in public with her, and that he accepts her for who she is. However, she gets uncomfortable when he eats racist Golliwog Biscuits in front of her and when he compares her hand to a possum's paw, which triggers the years of being compared to animals by racist bullies.
The memoir reaches its climax when Clarke comes home one day to discover her father has left her mother, taking his record collection, stereo, and clothing in a dramatic display. It soon comes out that her father has been seeing a white woman in secret for years, and is only now leaving to live with her. Clarke says the new partner isn't "a patch on my mum."
The memoir ends with an epilogue. At the end of the summer holidays, Clarke's son returns to school, excited to be back. Having forgotten his water bottle, he asks if Clarke can buy a bottle of water from the petrol station. Inside, the white attendant comments on the way "you people" carry their babies in slings. Clarke drops off her son and returns home, stopping in the park across from her apartment. She lets her baby daughter loose, and the girl begins eating fistfuls of dirt. Clarke comments that she knows this is her children's country, and that they are the descendants of the people "unbroken" by the Atlantic slave trade.
