In Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen an American Lyric Rankine helps people understand life in America as a black woman or person of color. This is done through talking in the second person narrative and Rankine either telling her story or stories of other people of color. But in the book, something that got my attention was the references to the Colors red, white, and blue. There could be many reasons for the repetition for those three colors together for example she could be trying to get the attention of the American people with the use of the American flag colors. But to me in this book I see these colors repeating as a way to expose how the news media shows what happens in interactions between people of color and the American police forces.
The first reference to one of these colors shows up was “In the darkened moment a body given blue light a flashlight” (Rankine – 70). When I see the words blue light and flashlight together the first thing, I think of is a police officer/ officers police lights being on and the officer walking up to a car with a flashlight to check for something illegal. The next thing that tells me that the colors represent interactions between people of color and the American police forces is when the book says “Stand where you are” (Rankine – 70). When this is said I picture a police officer/ officers doing a search and the person of color is afraid because of the history of violence between people of color and police forces all over America. The color blue is also brought up when Rankine says no matter what time it is blue is always around “looking into the blue light. All day blue burrows the atmosphere” (70). To me this is saying that no matter where she goes no matter what time it is, she can’t get away from the blue of the sky in the day and even the cops blue during the day. Another place where the police force is talked about is “you would look past me, all gloved up, in a big coat, with a fancy fur around my collar, and record a self-saying, you should be scared, the first person can’t pull you together” (Rankine – 71). Here I see a few things referring to the police forces one thing I see is raising the idea that if she or he wasn’t black or had fancier clothes the police wouldn’t pay attention to her or him. I also believe the self-saying is a reference to cell phone videos of police officers’ violence especially on people of color becoming more common. I also see a reference in the jailing of people of color when the book talks about “The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument” (Rankine – 72). To me when I hear life sentence and blunt instrument close together, I think of police officers using force to arrest a person of color no matter if they did something or not. The last piece that I connect to how the interaction is when it talked about a red-tailed hawk waiting to strike “a red – tailed hawk, dusk at dawn, taking over blue, surveying moment” (Rankine – 76). Here I think Rankine is saying that the police even in the early morning is waiting for a person of color to do something that could be justified or even unjustified as against the law so they could swoop in and attack their pray.
Now in regards to the history of violence against people of color for me and people around my age we probably are most likely to remember the Trevon Martin case because of the media coverage around it as for people in high school and middle school now when they think of violence against people of color it’s a good chance the first incidences that come to their head is the Breanna Taylor and George Floyd cases. But that doesn’t mean that these are not the only examples of violence against blacks as we can see on page 134. There are so many “In memory of” (Rankine – 134) and some of them are followed by names and some are not. The further you get down the list the blurrier the list gets.
Discussion Questions
- What do you think is going on with Page 134? In your opinion do you feel Page 134 is important to the book? Explain.
- When the Red-Tailed hawk was referenced on page 72 what was the first thing you thought of?
Works Cited:
Rankine, Claudia, 1963-author. Citizen : An American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, 2014.
