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Racism In Claudia Rankine's Poem Citizen

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The excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s poem Citizen chronicles several instances of modern everyday racism that the narrator faces. Rankine uses her own experiences to demonstrate the microagressions and racism that African Americans face every day. While some African American individuals try to change parts of their world, other people who do not face the same oppression do not understand that it needs to be changed. Throughout the poem, the narrator’s character growth is marked by her willingness to stand up for herself and her race.
In the first section, the narrator describes a time when she did not stand up for herself. When the man complains that his dean is making him hire someone of color when there are so many other good writers out there, …show more content…

She says she “wants time to function as a power wash”, and remove the memory of the ride from her mind before she enters her house. This stanza shows how distressed the narrator feels about the comment, proving that her method of coping is not viable, and that she cannot let go of the small instances of racism she experiences. Her attempts to ignore times when she is offended do not work, and in that regard, are little better than John Henryism. She still does not confront racism, which would allow her some closure on the matter, but rather than fight against …show more content…

The woman recalls how she told the man who pushed her son to apologize, a sentiment that the narrator sympathizes with, saying that she wants “the black child pushed to the ground to be seen, to be helped to his feet and be brushed off” showing what she would do in this situation. “The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards, she says, like newly found uncles and brothers” showing that because of the racism she experienced, a group of people united to protect her and her son. This is very different from the confrontation in Starbucks, when the narrator stands alone, and people seem to side more with the man’s racist comments than with her

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Racism and racial inequality was extremely prevalent in America during the 1950’s and 1960’s. James Baldwin shows how racism can poison and make a person bitter in his essay “Notes of a Native Son”. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “A Letter from Birmingham Jail” also exposes the negative effects of racism, but he also writes about how to combat racism. Both texts show that the violence and hatred caused from racism form a cycle that never ends because hatred and violence keeps being fed into it. The actions of the characters in “Notes of a Native Son” can be explain by “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”, and when the two texts are paired together the racism that is shown in James Baldwin’s essay can be solved by the plan Dr. King proposes in his

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The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.

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Her final act towards the Misfit was not out of charity, but in attempt to save herself. Set in the South in the 1950s, the grandmother dutily satisfied the stereotypes that blossomed within her generation. She speaks of the older days, when children were more respectful, and good men were easier to find. However, she never expresses what defines a good man, which suggests her unsteady moral foundation. The grandmother also explicitly articulates the racism that was unfortunately common in the South, ironically prevalent in the religious and upper middle class circles like the ones she belonged to.

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Claudia Rankine a renown poet, uses her novel “Citizen: An American Lyric” to discuss issues of race and imagination. Claudia Rankine is an absolute master of poetry and uses her gripping accounts of racism, through poetry to share a deep message. Claudia Rankine uses poetry to correlate directly to accounts of racism making Citizen a profound experience to read. Not only is this poetic novel a vision of her world through her eyes, Rankine uses the experiences of Americans whose color has rendered them invisible to the many who are privileged enough to be blind and not note racism as a large issue in America. Claudia Rankine articulates the use of you and further emphasizes the larger meaning of the title Citizen and recognizing that word through societal issues.

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This quote is important because in the beginning she was feeling like the only colored person and then it moved to how she felt out of place at times. But in the end she sees that she has always been one. This narrative agrees with how I understand race, because we are all one.

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And I can see from the outside in, driven by the old voices of childhood and lost in anger and fear.” This quote explains how a child could be effected with racist comments. Although it happened when she was a child, the racist comments came back to her because that’s what she believes she was. This ties in with Americans having equal opportunities because it shows how one could be affected by racism. If the American government was to restrict every race

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(pg.3). This quote shows just how the questions were affecting her. The Norton’s were asking her questions that she had no idea how to answer because she was unsure of what they meant. The questions made her feel uncomfortable and hurt, however, they kept asking Carole about her race. Another example of racism in this short story is how close minded Betty is towards the idea of mixed children in this world.

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