Grutter V. Bollinger

“She wanted her son to go there as well, but because of affirmative action or minority something...her son wasn’t accepted” (Rankine 13). This quote is interesting to me because it reminds of the case Grutter v. Bollinger, where a white female applicant to the University of Michigan Law School sued the school for violating her Fourteenth Amendment because they denied her admission. She lost in the end, but the ideology that minorities are more easily accepted into schools than whites is still thought and said by some white Americans today. The importance this quote serves to the poem is that the quote is another example of a microaggression that the author wants the reader to understand happens.

“She says she grabbed the stranger’s arm and

I swear to God” (Rankine 29)! Even though this may not be the most important of the first 80 pages, this quote is most definitely my favorite because I can relate to it! Most of the poem so far has just been acts of microaggressions experienced by black people so unfortunately, I have not been able to relate to most of the poem until now. Honestly, if I was in Serena’s position I would’ve screamed this at the first ref would have given me a bad call. I have the utmost respect for Serena along with many others for the way she deals with racism and disadvantages. I think this quote is important to the concept of black people anger and how if a black person, like Serena Williams, cracks once then they are seen as “crazy.”

“And when the woman with multiple degrees says, “I didn’t know black women could get cancer…” (Rankine 45). This quote caught my attention because it completely flabbergasted me to think that an educated person could actually think or say this. There is no doubt whatsoever that any person, no matter what the race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc. can, unfortunately, be diagnosed with cancer. To me, this quote serves to provoke some kind of emotion in the reader with the thought black women couldn’t get