Summary Of Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine’s book, Citizen: An American Lyric, was written in 2014, and it can best be described as both criticism and poetry. The book’s first chapter focuses on a series of incidents known as microaggressions. Rankine never uses this term to describe these slights in her book, but I believe this word, microaggressions, best captures exactly what is going on in Rankine’s book, but specifically, the first chapter. Microaggressions can be anything from a statement, action, or incident that can be taken as or regarded as an instance of indirect, or even subtle, unintentional discrimination against members of a minority group. This group could be based on ethnicity or race. These microaggressions could also be described as casual racism. They happen in

Some people today do not think racism is as big of a problem in as it really is. Some think that it ended with the Civil Rights movement. Rankine shows that this is not the case. She gives the us numerous examples of instancers of casual racism not only on an everyday surface, but also on a bigger stage.
As I stated earlier, Rankine gives numerous examples of these microaggressions. The first example can be seen on page five, “You never really speak except for the time she makes her request and later when she tells you you smell good and have features more like a white person.” I am not sure if this is a personal story of a situation that occured in Rankine’s childhood, or maybe a story that she was told by another. That is besides the point. The point is that a white girl was cheating off of a black girl, and when the white girl went to “thank” the black girl, she gave a racist remark without even realizing it. Rankine goes on to talk about later in the passage, “You assume she thinks she is thanking you for letting her cheat and feels better cheating from an almost white person.” Essentially, because the black girl had features similar to a