Citizen Post

Citizen Post:

                  Citizen, by Claudia Rankine, is art in the form of rhetoric protest; chapters are written in short narratives elaborated with images depicting the multi-faceted shades of discrimination. Effective in prose-style writing, Rankine recounts the personal stories of discrimination – both firsthand experience and secondhand knowledge. Examples include: the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Serena Williams’ tennis matches and personal matches against racism, mentioning of the KKK, and more. These stories are independent from one another; however, they are all intertwined by the same context in which these situations were created – that is, the idea (and central theme of the book) of feeling … “most colored when thrown against a sharp white background” (Rankine 29). The imagery sketched throughout the pages are a visual medium in communicating the poetic language to the audience – “us” as in the general public, and perhaps more specifically, white people who were blind to the fault in prejudice. Moreover, the ambiguity of the art may be purposeful – left to the audience’s imagination to decipher the author’s reasoning of the visual-story parallel. That said, Rankine’s purpose is to educate on the events of discrimination (not simply a bit past post Civil Rights Movement but modern-day), and to mediate on the definition of being “American” – an identity clearly not simply outlined by color. The most interesting (and equivocal) element of Rankine’s writing was the use of second-person perspective – “you.” Who is “you?” The exact identity is masked, but, apparent is that each “you” was a victim of discrimination. For example, “You” is a 12-year child attending Sts. Philip and James School on White Plains Road: “You” is the child that let the white girl cheat because “You” were told that “you smelled good and have features more like a white person” (5). Overall, the book was easy to follow along since Rankine conveyed the truth in racism through simple prose and imagery and with it, an emotional appeal to the inequity faced by people of color.