Who Are You? Summer 2018

Kara Walker is an African American female artist who creates artworks that features the slavery society of antebellum America using dark shapes juxtaposed on white background. The artworks she created features racial tensions between whites and blacks to show how easily atrocities can be committed during that period. She said that when she creates artworks, she wants to “be the heroine and kill the heroine at the same time”. This sentence shows the contradictory reality before the civil war. While upper class white people enjoyed the privileged status and the lives of “ladies” and “gentlemen” as portrayed in Gone with the Wind, which conveys an nostalgia towards antebellum America, it is actually based on the atrocity of enslaving and exploiting black people. Kara Walker’s works put the two scenarios together to point out the fact that people doesn’t know what they seem to know about certain parts of history since multiple factors are not usually put together for consideratio...

A banner, unfurled, boxy white caps on black cloth. "Racism is as American as Baseball". In Citizen: An American Lyric , Claudia Rankine explores the manifestation of racism, specifically anti-blackness, in America: in casual statements, thoughtless asides, the language used by both strangers and friends. Rankine dedicates page 15 to "your" neighbor calling the police on your friend, who was simply pacing outside during a phone call. You "clumsily tell your friend that the next time he wants to talk on the phone he should just go in the backyard"; he "looks at you for a long minute before saying he can speak on the phone wherever he wants." Rankine returns to apologies throughout the book: your neighbor's apologies to you and your friend; your own apologetic response born of your desire to make it easier for your friend and yourself when "making it easier" entails limits on the both of you, restrictions, self-effacement; your ther...

In Citizen , Claudia Rankine writes stories of racist experiences in a shocking yet moving way. In particular, her use of the second person is extremely effective. By using the word “you,” Rankine really draws the reader into her words and communicates emotions on a more personal level.  Rankine’s use of the second person is especially powerful in the episode where “you” go to your neighbor’s house for therapy, and she mistakes you as an intruder. This episode exposes the implicit racism in our society. Without any hesitation, the therapist yells at the patient to leave solely on the basis of their skin color. The therapist apologizes in the end, but it is evident that racist stereotypes are deeply ingrained in people’s minds.

In the book "Citizen: An American Lyric," Claudia Rankine, author of the book, provided readers with numerous examples of micro-aggression. One example of these can be found in chapter 3: “And when the woman with the multiple degrees says, I didn’t know black women could get cancer”; while this, although being offensive, does not fall clearly into the category of racism, another example in the chapter can hardly be anything other than racism: “This friend says, as you walk toward her, You are late, you nappy headed ho.” Micro-aggression was created to categorize causal, daily degrading terms, and it has a lot of implications. One of such implications is the hardship micro-aggression causes on the listeners in responding to such micro-aggression. With direct racist terms, one can and should tell the speaker to stop, and even the legislature can help the victims. Yet, with micro-aggression, responding becomes suddenly harder. Because of the daily and casual nature of micro-agg...

While reflecting upon Citizen, I wanted to come back to the cover image that we talked about on the first day of class—David Hammons’ In the Hood. The severed hood “evokes lynchings” and represents the reality of being black (“David Hammon Makes a Hood Stand for a Race—and Racism”). At the same time, the fact that we regard this single image as a representation of “all the black bodies in this country” is also “racism,” because this view does not acknowledge the varied, difficult experiences faced by a huge diversity of individuals. Citizen was a reflection of both the reality of racism that others cannot even imagine as well as the combination of a huge number of perspectives, experiences, and stories. Citizen ends with Joseph Mallord William Turner’s The Slave Ship, which depicts the horrors black people have faced and face today. There’s also a Detail of Fish Attacking Slave from the same painting, representing the millions of slaves who died on slave ships whose voices have been f...

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine includes a long, continuous list of names of African Americans killed by the police, in addition to text that reads,” because white men can’t/police their imagination/black people are dying.” This provides commentary on the prevalence of police brutality in American society today, and how often unarmed African Americans are often the victims of this. Some believe body cameras and training people how to interact with the police will solve this problem, but it is the wild imagination of police officers who believed their “safety was at risk” or that “he/she/they had a gun.” The most dangerous place for an African American human being to live is the white man’s imagination because, historically, African Americans have been demonized and victimized. The stylistic choice of Rankine to leave the list unfinished is her way of warning readers and the rest of American society that until the root of the problem is dug out, this list of names will ...

Claudia Rankine tells the story with the powerful second person: "you". "You" can be anyone. You can be from the South, the Midwest, or New England; you can be a real estate owning millionaire, a new member of the middle class who is still invested in the bubbles of the suburb, or a homeless person on the city streets. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are from, what class you belong, or anything: If you are of African descent and identify as an African American, you will understand the anguish and anger the book attempts to express. It is a universal experience. Rankine even uses the example of a black artist, Jayson Musson, who attempts to spread the "angry nigger exterior". White America has taken African Americans the right to be angry for a long time. By spreading messages of black inferiority, White America forced African Americans to question or relinquish their race pride. W.E.B. Dubois described it as the creation of "double cons...

With Citizen , Claudia Rankine takes on the daunting task of both speaking to the truth of racism in America and making it accessible to the people who don’t feel the brunt of it everyday. She uses short, lyrical passages, explicitly displaying the raw emotion that is behind the interactions we have. Superficially, the stories she tells can come across differently to different people who read them, but ultimately drive home her focus on dichotomy and blatant injustice. She points out how “colored” is most colored when pitched against a white background, and how this lends to the racial discomfort and stress felt by the African-American community. Her most important point to me, however, is about the right they have to be angry and frustrated by such a situation. Too often a slip of anger is interpreted, as she puts it, as “bad sportsmanship.” The default expectation is of grace and contented retention of composure, but such a euphemized presumption is not what this country deserves...

How many times have people apologized for their stereotypes and bias against groups of people? In Citizen, Claudia Rankine uses direct conversation to the audience to personalize microaggressions of marginalized groups. In the imagination of the therapist's response to a black person, it is easy to see how deeply rooted these stereotypical identities of black people are in the common white community. The therapist responds with " I'm so, so sorry". But what is she really sorry for? Her rude behavior or her stereotypes for black people? Nowadays, we often hear "I'm sorry". "I'm sorry for accidentally shooting black people", "I'm sorry for violently dragging an Asian American doctor from a United Airline airplane because of overbooking". People tend to apologize for their actions, not for the mentality behind the actions conducted. There are always those who fail to empathize, consciously or unconsciously. Now the question is no...

Citizen unfolds a world where racism has never gone away. It is a powerful book that tells the slights, but there is nothing slight about them. Through the brief encounters and retelling of stories, Claudia brought us to reflect on our conscious or unconscious racism itself. What shocks me is how black people themselves endure with the unconscious racism. “You” expected the friend to voice out the unfair treatment that “you” have just experienced while being unable to speak “yourself.” “You” submitted to the white’s requirement even though “your” friend did nothing wrong. The inability to stand against these unfair treatments suggests the penetration of racism in white people and black people’s minds. Whether it being unconsciously avoiding sitting next to a black, concerning about black’s safety or doubting black’s credibility, our society seems to be filled with prejudices. The silence of the black in front of these conscious and unconscious racism indicates black’s lack of agency t...

By now in 2018, most Americans know the definition of racism. More than simply knowing the definition, most of us believe we understand the meaning behind the word and the nuances attached to it and most of us believe that there is no way we could possibly be racist. Saying the n-word in public is frowned upon by numerous different social circles, American parents allow their children to socialize with other black children, and after all, everyone seems to have a connection, personal or distant, to a black person. Wouldn’t this prove America is now post-racial, leaving racism a thing of the past? Claudia Rankine’s Citizen beautifully proves to her audience that we as Americans are, in fact, living within a racist society. By writing short, yet powerful, accounts of seemingly blatant instances of racism, Rankine reminds us of similar memories and puts a name to the problem we likely missed in the moment: racism. She does not just remind us of situations where racism is clear and solid...

Working on my final paper has allowed me to process much of the previously discussed ideas into a more compact, concise stream of thinking. In considering the centrality of race in mass incarceration, the discussions we had about racial bias and passing have come into play. I've been focusing on the accessibility of healthcare within the prison industrial complex for women of color, which relates to our lectures on the intersectional nature of identities. It would be naive to make the assumption that all women face the same structural barriers once released from prison — black women are largely ostracized from civil society and lack employment opportunities while their white counterparts find it relatively easier to regain their place in their respective communities. Women in prison often feel that they play a minor, insignificant role as a cog in the capitalist machine, or the private corporations that feed on their labor. Given a lack of regulations on prison labor and the num...

the appropriation of native american and indigenous peoples culture is seen in modern society in things as common as football game face paint to halloween costumes. while natives are not the only group to have their culture "borrowed," it is the appropriation of native culture that this country has been built on. the commodification and "replication" of native headdresses, jewelry, and clothing is a constant reminder of the misunderstanding and lack of respect for native peoples. this appropriation perpetuates the idea that natives are no longer an existent group of people; they are a people of the past who no longer deserve the respect of modern day peoples.

Am I too brittle and bitter? Am I too furious and frantic? Am I an outsider and an outcast? Am I too sensitive and sorrowful? Am I myself or any other person that looks like me? Am I not supposed to be whispering, talking, and yelling? Am I abnormal against the sharp white wall? Am I wanting too much and too little? Am I too quiet and too loud? Am I a citizen? Yes            Yes          Yes Yes Yes     Yes      Yes   Yes Yes    Yes  Yes     Yes     Yes Yes      YesYes      Yes   Yes Yes         Yes             Yes

I have played tennis for many years, and many of my close friends do as well. It is often said that tennis is much more of a mental game than physical. Tennis is a game where one single point, one move, can decide the outcome of the match-up. The most frustrating moments in tennis are when someone is "hooking." Hooking is when the opponent makes bad line calls to give themselves an advantage. If one watches a game of tennis, one may be surprised to see the anger and rage on the courts. When I am hooked, my instinct is to scream and become violent. My games are nowhere near the importance of a U.S. Open or other Grand Slam title, so it is hard to even begin to imagine the emotions that piled up in Serena Williams when she was discriminated on the court through blatantly foul line calls. If it were me, I would have quit and never looked back on the sport. I would have been so bitter that I would never have wanted anything to do with tennis again. Thus, the fact that Serena Will...

You are seething in anger and frustration. The boy, who is so Aryan that Hitler himself would have been more than proud to call him his own, stood up in front of the class and claimed that police violence against black people is justified. "Why do you think that?" You ask, over and over again. "It's just common knowledge," he says matter-of-factly, "that black people commit more crimes than white people. Therefore, it makes sense that black people should be arrest more often." You know deep down in your heart that that is not true at all. You know that it is wrong to say it. But you look around, and you see your class sitting around and not paying attention to the argument. They seem bored, because this ferverous outcry by this Aryan kid is so common, and you can only offer your anger at his ignorance. This is nothing new to these people. Injustice is normal and insubstantial to them, because it doesn't affect them. This makes you hate the boy, b...

Claudia Rankine's Citizen  begins and ends with images. Citizen 's narrative begins with David Hammonds's "In the Hood," which is displayed on the cover. Though Hammonds's work, created in 1993, evokes images of lynching with its decapitated hood, it has also come to symbolize the deaths of Trayvon Martin and countless other young black men. 160 pages later, Rankine closes  Citizen  with two striking images of Joseph Turner's  The Slave Ship : one printing of the entire painting and a close-up of fish attacking a drowning slave. Depicting the tossing overboard of bound slaves into the churning storm in order to lighten the ship, The Slave Ship  is from 1840: years before slavery was outlawed. But yet nearly 200 years later, the existence of Hammonds's "In the Hood" illustrates that the oppression of blacks is still very much alive. Nearly 200 years later, America still does not value black lives.

Being an avid nature lover, I spent nearly 10 years of my summers growing up in various summer camps spread-out across the East Coast. Whether sleep-away or day camp, though, I began to notice a common symbol that all of these camps would sell themselves through – Native American tradition. Depictions of dream catchers, eagle feathers and other (often stereotypical or overly simplified) symbols of Native American culture were a commonplace throughout camp pamphlets; they were intertwined with the camps’ company logos and flashed around the screen on official websites. While camp was in session, Facebook pages flooded with images of 8-year old dancing with counselors to Flo Rida during “pow wows” and sitting around camp fires while (usually-white) camp directors donned their “traditional headdresses.” Our class discussions concerning Native American culture and its complex connection to some sort of undefined “American identity” interested me as I began to ...

Having grown up obsessively watching Serena Williams play tennis, it is difficult to think about the injustices that she, a role model for so many, has undergone because she is a black woman. When Serena was excited about winning a point, people thought she was classless and distasteful. But when Caroline Wozniacki stuffed tennis balls and towels in her outfit, people laughed. There is no way to interpret this scene but as pure racism and disrespect. It should not be seen as obnoxious for Serena to have emotions when she loses a point when Novak Djokovic in 2010 could break his racket because he was losing his match. The tennis world and its viewers have handed Serena Williams a different set of rules and a stricter code of conduct simply because she is African American. In William's Nike ad from this March titled "Until We All Win" (linked here ), she says, "I've never been the right kind of woman... too black for my tennis whites... But I'm proving time a...

The case of Rachel Dolezal has challenged the fluidity of race and the way we think of modern passing. Many have stated that Rachel Dolezal is an example of reverse passing. In "standard passing," a person usually passes into a more privileged race; African Americans passed as whites as it would lend them more economic opportunities and would allow for a better quality of life. Another example would be Koreans passing as Japanese during the Japanese occupation. In essence, passing usually occurs when there is inequity. However, in Rachel Dolezal was born as a white American, but self identified as a African American. The common accusation of Rachel Dolezal is that she was dishonest about her own past and that she performed cultural appropriation. Additionally some have stated that her case is related to her white privilege as she was able to take the "good parts" of being African American, but she does not have to endure the same discrimination that African American...

Claudia Rankine's use of repetition in Citizen is especially moving, particularly in Chapter 6. Rankine repeats the passage, "And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description." Perhaps it is Rankine's decision to write this passage in second person that makes it so personal, but it serves to humanize the victims of police brutality. As depressing as it is, our society has become increasingly numb to the news stories about police brutality that surface much too often. But Rankine forces you into the position of an African American faced with police brutality through her words, and the repetition of this passage shows you how it happens over and over and over again. It has a way of making readers angered by the injustice, but helpless at the same time because how does one go about changing this description that has been fixed for so long? Are the demonstrations, social media posts, ...

Rachel Dolezal gained much more criticism after she underwent trans race surgery compared with that of transgendered celebrity Caitlyn Jenner received. It is interesting that “transgender” is an official word while the word “transrace” does not exist. The fact leads to the question: what makes transgender more widely accepted? Personally I think it relates to the two identities’ influence on social construct. Gender seems to be a stronger construct compared with race. In modern context, racial diversity is something most companies and institutes pursue, while gender remains a meaningful tag in job market. In specific, there are barely jobs that only white people or black people could do. In contrast, there are numerous jobs better suited only for one gender, such as nurses for women and soldiers for men. There is controversy of whether colleges should implement Affirmative Action while no college doubt if it should keep a balanced ratio of gender. Gender also decides numerous...

After hearing the case of Rachel Dolezal, I could not help but to feel confused. Personally, I do not understand why she received as much hate that she did. Not only did the world despise and slander her, but she also lost her job and everything she had worked her whole life for. People accused her of harming the black community by appropriating black culture for her own amusement, but it seems to me that she really identified as a black woman her whole life every day. She herself had said that she never intended on becoming white. The part I am most confused about is why people believed the best way to advocate for blacks was to remove her from her positions in the BlackLivesMatter movement and the NAACP. She was working hard on the behalf of blacks, so how does removing her benefit the community she is working for? Even in the case that what she did really was wrong, she never intended to hurt anyone and was a woman who worked hard and never wanted to become a celebrity. Thus, in thi...

Rachel Dolezal, a woman who was born a white woman but identifies as black, has sparked major controversy in terms of racial identity. Very involved as a civil rights activist, Dolezal was a leading member of her city’s NAACP, supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and even taught in an African American/Africana studies department at Eastern Washington University. She also raised her young black siblings as her own, and had mixed race children of her own. She claimed she always “felt black,” and being black seemed to be the only thing missing. However, one could argue that her involvement with the empowerment and advancement of the Black Community does not equate blackness, and that white person could be just as involved as she and remain an ally. Also, she did not experience discrimination or prejudice the same way a black child would (because she identified as white at the time), but only through her siblings and children. She took those experiences and tried to make them her ow...

Dear Pinky, As a colored person who passed as white, living in the north, your action was very impressive for me. Though I was always questioned by my conscience whether I have made the right choice to pretend to be white, I always try to persuade myself using reasons about the material benefits that I can gain and peoples' respect for me, which has made passing addictive. Now, upon hearing your brief story, I'd say congratulations to your ambitions and your resolution of helping the native black population in training them to become nurses. Even for me, a person who pretends to be a white woman, it is good news to hear that our old black community can finally become developed and at one day be respected by whites in our country. After all, passing as white in the north means constantly worrying about the potential leak of my information of the past and it is only through improving our black community that I can live a real happy life.  Yours sincere,  Anonymous

The 1949 film "Pinky" is currently praised for its relatively progressive stance on social justice issues pertaining to race, as well its portrayal of one's racial identity as less than just a superficial manifestation of color. The main character, Pinky Johnson, is an African American woman who, through previously passing as white, comes into her own identity and realizes the importance of her African American roots. Aside from this, the film also differs from the standard in that most of the main characters within the film are women who are not defined by their love interests, but rather their ambitions. For their performances, the actresses for Pinky, Miss Em, and Aunt Dicy received Academy Award nominations. But viewing the film from a more modern standpoint reveals a prominent issue within the film: Pinky is white. Now of course, the character of Pinky is intended to be a light-skinned African American, but the actress Jeanne Crain is very much of completely "wh...

When we examine books, films, and TV shows, we see the same perspective over and over: that of the heterosexual, cissexist white man, with few deviations. Other perspectives come, as if packaged, from boxes: the perspective of the Asian woman, but confined within the narratives of the "dragon lady" or "China doll"; the "sassy black sidekick"; the hypersexualized Latinx, to name a few. People of color have been portrayed time and time again by white people, donning comical "Engrish" accents and "culture costumes"  —  blackface, yellowface, redface, or brownface. Diversity isn't simply a quantitative measure  —  it's also about what's done with the characters, and who's working behind the scenes. When the representation of minorities is confined to one-dimensional narratives, we must learn to see them as anything different. Simply put, we lose potential: the potential for connection as human equals; the potential for a kin...

After learning of the events in the film Pinky and the novella Passing, it's becoming more clear to me about the binding connotations of passing. While we've focused on the concept of passing, where an individual who is able to diffuses across traditional ethno-racial barriers to be a part of a different group and to access that group's treatment by society. We have learned about light-skinned African-Americans who do this so that life for them is easier since they would have the privileges of white people in American society. We also learned that by having individuals that pass, many members of the black community felt betrayed by those individuals, since they were lucky not to be able to face the trauma of being black in America. But it was through the literature today that I really had a feel for that concern and dispair. In Pinky, not only do we hear over and over again how Aunt Dicey works hard to pay for Pinky's schooling, we see it as well. We can imagine, f...

In the film Pinky, we saw the protagonist, Pinky, suffering a lot for revealing the fact that she is black despite her light-colored skin. Considering this leads us to the question of thinking: could she have chosen to actually pass as a white person, which is what her boyfriend wanted her to do when he visited her, and enjoy the white privileges. Of course, in the movie, there is the factor of her grandmother not wanting her to deny her own identity, but there are other ways to understand this problem. In the book “Passing”, the protagonist’s, Irene’s, friend Clare passed as a white woman to marry a white man. When Irene visited Clare in Chicago, Irene was also made to say that she is white even though she did not really want to. Because they have passed as white, they were, in fact, vigilant of others fearing that their identity might be revealed and they would lose “their” white privileges. Throughout the novel, Clare, who passed as white to enjoy the white privileges, wanted to ge...

Analyzing Pinky’s character reveals much about the practice of racial passing. When Pinky leaves her hometown, she successfully passes as white, allowing her to become a nurse and possibly marry Tom, a white doctor. However, when Pinky returns home, she is unable to hide her African American roots. During the incident with the local police, Pinky could have easily avoided trouble by passing as white, but she chooses to reveal that she is black.   Despite being able to pass as a white woman, Pinky ultimately embraces her African American heritage. At the end of the film, Pinky gives up both her relationship with Tom and her life as a white woman to open a clinic and nursery school for African Americans. However, because Pinky has the potential to live two entirely different lives, the ending of the film will never be truly satisfying.

Pinky demonstrates the ambiguity that can be present in race as well as the meaning the language of race projects into nonracial ideas. The protagonist must change her name from Pinky to Patricia when she receives an education in the North, because Patricia is a more “white” name than Pinky. Furthermore, the difference between how white men treat Pinky when they first meet her and when they find out she is black is very palpable—the white police officers who immediately go from calling her “ma’am” to manhandling her, and the white men go from offering her a ride to attempting to assault her. While so many treat race as a sort of concrete and unmistakable identity, Pinky shows that race can be ambiguous in terms of both appearance as well as actions. Deviations from stereotypes in which certain ways different races “should” look or act can be startling, and this is shown in the immediate shifts in the white men in the movie as well as today. Pinky’s decision to return home after T...

Cultural appreciation is defined a the adoption of aspects of a minority culture without paying proper respects. Cultural appreciation, on the other hand, is the participation in certain aspects of a culture while honoring the source—the culture/ group from which they came. Questions regarding cultural appropriation arose when Katy Perry opened the American Music Awards in 2013 with a Japanese culture inspired theme. She and her her dancers—very few of them Asian—sported kimonos and continuously bowed throughout the performance. Perry essentially used the culture as a costume, which deems it cultural appropriation; she attempted to channel the persona of an Asian woman, only to abandon it when she takes her costume off. Although this performance was obviously problematic, people jumped to Perry’s defense, concluding she was only trying to appreciate and honor the culture. They refused to consider the idea that she was portraying Japanese women—or Asian American women in general—as sub...

The film Pinky (1949) tries to take what was a liberal stance on social issues in the United States, in specific regards to the south, but does not entirely hit the target. For one, the main actress, Jeanne Crain, is a white woman who plays the role of a colored person that is merely passing for white. It is understandable that to fulfill the role effectively, the actress should be able to pass convincingly for the audience, but the casting choice still seems amiss. It raises questions about who’s really passing for who, and about who has a claim to portray such weighted and socioculturally important characters as Pinky. To me, it seems that Jeanne Crain’s casting was intended to be inoffensive, but remains frustrating in that it dismisses underlying claims of the very racism the film preaches against. The portrayal of Pinky and her boyfriend Tom’s relationship also stands on shaky ground. Early in the movie, Pinky is harassed by two white men because of her status as a woman of...