Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is a lyric that describes the life black people in America. Rankine tells this story through a second person of view through the character “you”. Throughout the final chapter of the book, the protagonist questions her identity and self worth since society’s racism towards the black community constantly interferes with the way black people view themself as a full human being in America. However, at the end of the book, Rankine switches perspective to first person showing how the protagonist has embodied her true self instead of letting society impact how she views herself.
In the beginning of chapter 7, Rankine writes a non narrative poem with more conventional line breaks than usually. The protagonist has “some years…wanting to escape- floating above your certain ache- still the ache coexists.” (Rankine, 139) By explaining that escaping from the racism in society gives the protagonist headaches, we can infer that it is painful for the black people to constantly fight against racism. These headaches are a reminder of the emotional suffering that blacks constantly have to deal with. This emotional suffering is evident throughout the rest of Rankine’s poem as shown when “you” discovers that “given the histories of you and you” makes the protagonist question herself by asking “ who is this you” (Rankine, 140) and “How to care for the injured body, the kind of body that can’t hold the content it is living?” (Rankine, 143) When the protagonist asks these questions, it is evident that society views black people as worthless, which is caused by the long history of racism in the US.
On July 13, 2013, George Zimmerman was on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, which caused an uproar throughout the United States. While listening to the radio broadcast about Martin, the neighboring car next to the protagonist said something racist about Martin which led to the protagonist unleashing his anger. The protagonist knew that her “partner wants to face off with a mouth and who knows what handheld object the other vehicle carries. You pull your love back into the seat because though no one seems to be chasing you, the justice system has other plans.” (Rankine, 151) We can assume that the protagonist’s friend is black and the person in the neighboring car is white. The protagonist is trying to calm her friend down because she knows that rage and anger will put them at danger. You understand that the justice system has always been against black people. If a black person naturally shows their anger in public, the justice system will unfairly punish black people. Because of this, you doesn’t feel safe showing anger in public. The justice system is an example of how society treats black people. Society wants black people to get over racist encounters and racist history by reacting in a way that is seen as negative and threatening.
At the end of the book, Rankine switches to a first person point of view and tells the last final page of the story through the character “I”. I has an encounter with microaggression before she went to play tennis where “a woman pulled in and started to park her car” but when she noticed that I is black, “she backed up and parked on the other side of the lot.” I’s husband asked if she won from this microaggression but I knew that “it wasn’t a match…it was a lesson.” (Rankine, 159) In this event, a match is when a person is able to go up against another person implying that the standard for both are equal and fair. A lesson is defined to teach or instruct. This line connects to Rankine’s bigger idea of how to combat racism which is to educate those to show how racism affects people of color since white people can never experience the struggles that people of color face.
Work Cited:
Rankine, Claudia, 1963-author. Citizen : An American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, 2014.
Discussion Questions:
- How would you interpret the image on page 147?
- Why is the shift between second pov to first pov significant?
Hi Khaleah! I really loved how you presented racism in your blog post, relating to identity and sense of self. It is very obvious that people of color struggle with their identity due to the racism that society brings which is a huge problem. The quote, “The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you–” (Rankine 146) gives an amazing interpretation as to how this racism effects people of color. The black community should not be so far influenced by the racism that surrounds them and it is horrible that it interferes with the way they view themselves as a whole. Feeling like you don’t belong to yourself is a huge problem when dealing with identity and sense of self. Answering your first question, I feel the image on page 147 shows a sense of suffocation as there is a hand around the neck of the figure. I feel this shows the way the black community feels with the constant attacks of racism throughout society.
Hi Khaleah! This was a great blog post! I especially liked and thought it was important how you brought up the inequalities of our justice system with the murder of Trayvon Martin. Not only was that murder unjustified, but it was an important step forward into the Black Lives Matter movement.
As for your first question, when I first saw the image on page 147, I immediately thought it was a picture of a person with pieces of another person if that makes any sense. In the image, the figure is shown made up of a collage of different body parts. There is also a hand around the figures neck, insinuating strangulation. There is also a forearm in the mouth, which made me think that this figure had strong words, but were silenced. This image goes along with the quote on page 146 which stood out to me, “The worst injury is feeling that you don’t belong so much to you —” (Rankine 146). This makes me believe that this figure in the photo, although they have their own “being” persay, feels like they don’t even belong to themselves because they are constantly silenced and pushed back.
Hi Kahaleah! Great post, I like that you decided to look into the deeper reasoning behind Rankine suddenly deciding to switch the narrative. I think both perspectives were extremely important for this book for not only her, but also for the readers standpoint. It is difficult to empathize with someone if we do not know or understand what they are going through, Rankine gives people the opportunity to understand what people go through all the time in their daily lives, things that we normally would take for granted, like going to therapy, the supermarket, or even where you sit on a train. This situations are awkward, uncomfortable and disheartening. To think that people see you as anything less than human soley based on what you look like. We are given what this all feels like and then implies that this is what minorities feel everyday. “Even now your voice entangles this mouth whose words are here as pulse, strumming shut out, shut in, shut up– you cannot say” (Rankine, 143) This is important because it shows how these people feel, they may feel they are unable to speak up. Rankine wants us to imagine the pain of having to bite your tongue, not having the ability to speak up for yourself because then you will be seen in a negative light for “overreacting”. Then the switch of narrative gives us an opportunity to feel empathetic, though some of us may not have actually gone through those things, we now understand at least somewhat of what this might feel like which can hopefully bring us closer as a society.