Claudia Rankine- Citizen: An American Lyric // Mutation and Racism

Using language emphasizes your right. Speaking up is an act of establishing yourself. In regards to racism, to be mute is to erase yourself .

Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric is written based on real life racism towards her and other black Americans in the United States. Rankine is involved with the importance of language in terms of how it affects the enactment of racism. Accordingly, the narration is written using the pronoun 'you'. In this sense it is provocative choice of word, since it destabilizes the reader's understanding of 'you'. Does it address any reader? A black reader? A white reader? Each of these identifications signify a different interpretation of the second person pronoun.

For example, in the beginning of the books the writer asks,

Do you feel hurt because it’s the “all black people look the same” moment, or because you are being confused with another after being so close to this other?

This direct compact between the reader and the writer shakes the latter's personal attachment to the book. Rankine's choice of 'you' is consciously used as a means of either familiarizing, questioning, or disturbing the reader's experience with racism towards the black community.

In addition, the concept of silence and the perpetuation of racism is addressed when she writes,

John Henryism—for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend.

This psychological effect of racism reddens the importance of speaking (up) to situations or people that invigorate racial stigmatization. In other words, silence is lethal because it allows racism to grow and expand. It makes racism logical and natural. If there is no reaction, nothing changes.

Later in the book, Rankine refers to Judith Butler's explanation regarding the hurtful aspect of language. Specifically, language is hurtful because it makes one addressable to external forces. Consequently, racist language shrinks one's identity to the racist remarks of the outside. Regarding this idea Rankine states,

You begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present.

A racist language breeds racist perceptions. In this way, language is a powerful tool in re-addressing the racist, for it gives the addressee a voice* and voice is better than silence. It marks ones' presence. Maybe language could, to some extend, reform a traumatized person's sense of self and establish his/her right to equally co-exit in the same space with others, But also, language is a tool for the person that lives outside of racism, for if used correctly, it can help to eliminate this social problem.

*Photograph by Bruno Barbey, 1985