Racism In Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

James Baldwin is an activist and writer that was born and raised in Harlem that stood for equality within the black community. Baldwin is the grandson of a former slave and was the oldest of nine children where he grew up in poverty. At the age of fourteen, he discovered his passion for writing and reading by his hobby was going to libraries. As year He published his first book in 1955 known as Notes of a Native Son. The novel Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin displays a collection of essays of where he critiques racism and examines the culture of Blacks in White America. In addition, James Baldwin adds in his perspective and personal experiences when dealing with racism. The book is divided into three parts. Part one consists of three

The author presents the readers with different experiences of what occurs in her everyday life. Each example contains racist actions although not drastic it’s subtle enough to be detected by people of color that might be oblivious to white people. These daily racists actions whether intentional or not are micro aggressions meaning that they are instances of racism that are communicated to people of color on a daily basis.

The major thesis in this book, are broken down into two components. The first is how we define racism, and the impact that definition has on how we see and understand racism. Dr. Beverly Tatum chooses to use the definition given by “David Wellman that defines racism as a system of advantages based on race” (1470). This definition of racism helps to establish Dr. Tatum’s theories of racial injustice and the advantages either willingly or unwillingly that white privilege plays in our society today. The second major thesis in this book is the significant role that a racial identity has in our society. How we see others have an impact on how we create laws and access to quality education, financial and social resources. Furthermore, how

The rhetorical strategies and stylistic choices used in paragraphs one through three of Brent Staples’ essay, “Just Walk On By,” and paragraphs nine through ten of Judith Ortiz Cofer’s essay, “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” are all used to describe the authors’ experiences with racism. However, the individual methods they use differ in the scope and the detail of the events they describe. Staples describes his experiences with racism he had over an entire year, while Cofer describes a single event in much greater detail. This difference results in readers of Staples’ essay gaining an understanding of how widespread of a problem racism is, and readers of Cofer’s essay gaining an in depth understanding of how just how awful dealing with racism can be.

Michelle Alexander is a writer and an advocate for civil rights. In her book she writes about the advantages of the civil rights movement, which has been the foundation by the mass imprisonment of African Americans during the war on drugs. She talks about the history of how race evolved

We are living in a world where the erasure and dehumanization of people of color is slowly becoming a normative. Voices silenced, struggles trivialized, deaths becoming statistics, brutality only brought up for shock factor, achievements hidden and it is all slowly becoming accepted. Through various rhetorical strategies Claudia Rankine illustrates the experience of being part of the marginalized identity in the United States and depicts how subtly and multifaceted the methods of oppression take place in the daily life are and the negative repercussions it holds on the individual.

As Limerick was born in California, she her overall writing centers around the idea that Westward Expansion was a legacy, despite its detrimental factors. In her college years, she graduated from University of California Santa Cruz and Yale. Her forward thinking was most likely derived from Yale and her previous experience as a professor’s assistant at Harvard. She is chair of the Board of the Center of the American West and works at University of Colorado at Boulder. In her book, she primarily delves into social factors of the west, as well as dabbling on the economic and political additives.

I thought racism was a long-dead school of thought when we first began learning about Martin Luther King Jr. in the first grade; I remembering sharing this with my parents, and the dumbfounded look they had in response to my naïveté—or perhaps my stupidity. It took me another year to come around to the idea that racism was still alive and well in this country (after all, no one that I knew was being lynched or denied the right to vote): when I first heard “nigger” used to refer to Barack Obama by my grandmother’s neighbor in South Carolina—a place where prejudice runs deep and some believe the Civil War is still being fought nearly one hundred and fifty-five years later. Since then I must have heard “nigger” used hundreds of times as a term of endearment or as a vile insult; by my black friends or by my white classmates; in song lyrics or in everyday conversation; however, each time one thing remains the same: the immense power and history behind the most loaded word in the English language. “Nigger” is not interchangeable with the word slave; slave is not the invention of American racism and it does not

“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.

Nella Larsen brings in the discussion of race and how different individuals who identify as “black” or “white” view themselves. It talks about both the absence and presence of self through the use of the characters, Irene and Clare. In Passing, it shows how Irene identify herself as “black” but passes off as “white” in comparison to Clare who identifies herself as “white” and hence passes off as “white”. However, some critics argue that Irene portrays a sense of self through Irene’s sense of identity of being a “mother” and “black” through her community. Other critics put forth the notion that Clare portrays an absence of self through her final actions when she jumped off the window and disappears from the scene after her husband calls her a “nigger”. I will be taking a postmodern approach to the text and supplementing it with modernism and psychoanalytic theories before stating my final stance that postmodernism may be the most appropriate approach. This approach ensures that different perspectives are present in my analysis and ensures that it is not one-sided. The question that I hope to focus my argument on is “Does the postmodernist approach better emerge the idea of self from racism?”

Accordingly, this relates to Camp’s statement that “slurs are so rhetorically powerful because they signal allegiance to a perspective” (Camp 335). Even if the person using the slur does not adhere to this perspective when using it, that perspective appears to be present in the word itself. Camp also explains that the negative perspective of slurs is especially powerful because they are used to describe entire groups of people, not just individuals. I agree with Camp’s emphasis on perspectivism as it concerns slurs, and I am especially moved by her discussion of the issue of social complicity. Camp states

When aggressors attack with negative or racist comments, victims react with silence intentionally or unintentionally. Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric incorporates Rankine’s experiences with microaggressions as well as her thoughts on how racism in American society affects black Americans. In 1970, Dr. Chester M. Pierce, a psychiatrist, and Harvard professor coined microaggression as a term to describe daily racist insults. Pierce constructed this term after regularly witnessing incidents where non-black Americans assaulted black Americans with subtle yet hurtful racist comments. Citizen serves as a critique reflecting the daily racism in America and how American society treats black individuals. American society treats black

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine is a hybrid and communal text constructed out of varying poetic form accompanied by contrasting imagery, and historical events. Rankine, although the author of this text is not necessarily its narrator. She plays with prospective, switching the fundamental meaning of “you” and pulls from the personal experiences of her friends, colleagues, and surrounding community. Rankine is able to incorporate “an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in [her] writing”, blur the line between various genres, and “[reject] … elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist design”, which are the pillars of postmodern works (Klages). She utilizes historical and modern events such as the Jim Crow laws, affirmative

Language can either separate someone from this larger identity or connect him or her to it. This essay shows that black people in America have been systematically and institutionally marginalized by white society that their creation of separate and distinct language was a necessity, and this essay brings to light the struggles my community ---------- the black community --------- had faced in an effort to break through stereotypes and erroneous assumptions .I personally enjoyed how Baldwin incorporated historical examples into his essay, such as the Irish and the Germans, because it showed me that African Americans were not the only ones who felt marginalized by the way they use

The act of racial discrimination impacts innocent people's lives in numerous, negative ways; hence why multiple people, worldwide can not tolerate racism and discrimination. The novel written by Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees, displays a wide range of scenarios where racism results in suffering. Rosaleen, a black woman, will never forget how three white men negatively impact her life; she will remain scarred unto death. Also, ever since the racial incident involving April and her twin, May, pain is constantly accompanying April; consequently, she commits suicide. Finally, when May loses April, she endures all the various sufferings of the world, including racial discrimination. Based on this novel, the enforcement of racism will result in a lifetime of suffering.