Progression 1

Miles Kirshner

Kelan Koning

English 103

20 September 2020

An Effective Citizen

You’re at the grocery store after a long day at the auto-shop picking up dinner for your family. You walk around the store gathering ingredients for the meal when someone stops you and asks where the baking aisle is. “I don’t know,” you reply, and she responds, “But, I thought you work here?” After you’ve got everything you need and are next in line at the checkout, you realize that you forgot one key ingredient. You leave your basket at your spot in line and quickly grab the item. However, when you approach your spot in line, you see the person in line behind you move your basket off to the side as if it was never there and take your place. When you ask why they did that, the customer behind you says “Oh, I just thought you worked here.”

Microaggressions are real. They happen in everyday life and go unnoticed by what seems to be everyone but yourself. They demean those who are their victims while working to support the construct that aims to keep society the way it is and to keep its perpetrator with the upper hand. Without understanding the root causes of microaggressions and how they morph into more serious acts, we cannot progress our society and advance towards equality. In her book, Citizen, Claudia Rankine effectively uses tactics such as individual experiences and evidence from well-known events to incite awareness about how microaggressions develop from the subconscious and build to result in unequal treatment and violent racism.

Rankine’s main argument is based around the idea that microaggressions form in the subconscious and then morph into racist actions over time. But where do these subconscious feelings and beliefs of hatred form in the first place? We can infer that ideals of racism must come from somewhere, and Rankine’s work makes us wonder how it all begins. Maybe growing up in an area that lacks diversity and being raised with prejudiced beliefs against others results in one’s own subconscious feelings of animosity towards other people. Maybe having a bad experience causes people to wrongfully profile an entire group of people in a negative way, forming a bias deep within. Because beliefs of prejudice and hatred are still prevalent within the citizens of our country we must learn how to prevent these feelings from turning into microaggressions and microaggressions from building and becoming vicious acts of racism.

Through individual examples, Rankine applies to the reader’s emotion, allowing one to take on the victim’s perspective of microaggressions to show how demeaning and defenseless microaggressions make one feel. She also shows how frequently they occur by drawing attention to the ignorance of those who commit microaggressions. In an example where a woman is having a conversation with her friend, he tells her that “his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there” (Rankine 10). Rankine describes how the woman wondered, “Why do you feel comfortable saying this to me?” and that she wished she “could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead … fly forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind” (Rankine 10). Rankine emphasizes the ignorance of the man in this example by making it clear that he does not follow this phrase with any other dialogue. The lack of self-correction or a phrase to try and cover up this obvious microaggression shows that he saw nothing wrong with his clearly hurtful and inappropriate comment. This example also shows that microaggressions are committed so often that those who constantly fall, victims, are tired of standing up for themselves that they just give up altogether, wishing the situation would just disappear. The phrases from the woman in the example are her speaking to herself in her head, not out loud, showing that she is too tired of standing up for herself to say anything to her friend. This, in turn, continues the cycle of microaggressions and racist thoughts and actions because those who commit them go on unreprimanded by victims who are hindered by pain deep within. Therefore, conversations like these, as minor as they may seem to an ignorant, white person, continue the system of racism and oppression for the victims.

Rankine’s usage of the second person in her examples also actively puts the reader in the shoes of the victim, appealing to one’s sense of empathy. By repetitively saying “you” in these examples, Rankine makes her writing seem like it is speaking directly to the reader, making one feel a sensation as similar as possible to those who experience microaggressions. By giving the reader this feeling, one can begin to understand how microaggressions work to support the cycle of systematic racism. This is one of the main ways that Rankine’s writing causes the reader to become aware and understand how microaggressions build from small feelings, into hurtful words, and then develop into racist acts that perpetuate the system of racism.

In her reference to the rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina, Rankine shows how microaggressions and biases may be initially subconscious but directly affect actions in real life. Rankine repeatedly writes the phrase, “Have you seen their faces?” throughout the passage. This phrase is meant to show that due to the subconscious bias and racism of rescue teams, those who were victims of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction were “invisible” and ignored. One of the unnamed individuals quoted in the passage says, “...it was the classic binary between...between the whites and blacks…”(Rankine 83). This essentially represents the feeling that people of minority groups have during moments like these, which happen with such frequency and repetition that it is foolish to think of them as “unfortunate” or “coincidental.” This tiring repetition of microaggressions and the feelings they cause are represented by the quote, “We never reach out to anyone to tell our story, because there's no ending to our story…”(Rankine 84). Rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina show that what may start as a subconscious feeling of prejudice, eventually breaks free and influences life or death, policy, and public safety. Many people along with myself before reading this book, may not be aware of to what extent racism is deeply ingrained and displayed in everyday life. This is why Rankine’s work, and others that convey similar ideas, are essential towards changing the mindset of common citizens by expanding their perspective and understanding how we must change as a society to eliminate racism altogether.

Police brutality is an extremely pertinent example today that Rankine also references in Citizen. This is the largest and best example of how microaggressions and biases can culminate indirectly influencing the fate of an individual’s life. As already stated when discussing Rankine’s passage about Hurricane Katrina, the ending of human life should not be because of the unjust and improper biases developed throughout one's life. As Rankine describes implicit bias as often subconscious, this is evidence of how that bias builds into something as severe as ending a human life. Rankine gives us a taste of this in her passage on Mark Duggan. Duggan’s situation seems identical to a lot of the police instances that have happened so far through the year 2020. For example, victims such as George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, who are among many others. These are all people whose lives were brutally ended as a direct result of prejudice and the building of microaggressions without consequence. Rankine provides police brutality as an example with the intention of making the reader aware of how this is a fatal expression of bias so that one can easily identify them in the future. This book effectively shows the reader what one major reason violent racism, such as police brutality, occurs. By doing this, Rankine emphasizes the importance of understanding and stopping implicit bias and microaggressions in order to prevent these violent acts and stop the system of racism in its tracks. Citizen is a book of extreme relevance to our society and social circumstances today, as it is a literary work of art with an informative and eye-opening perspective that leaves the reader more enlightened to the issues faced by minorities on a daily basis.

Citizen by Claudia Rankine is an insightful piece of writing that causes the reader to take on the perspective of victims of racism in order to denounce the system of racism in the United States. It effectively informs the reader about how microaggressions and biases can build towards larger and more harsh aggressions later on. She uses personal stories, stories of others, and examples from real life to convey these issues. Throughout her stories, she uses the second person to make the reader feel the harsh realities of microaggressions and racism that are prevalent today. Rankine provides context and explanation, perhaps, for events that occur in the present day, by giving the reader instances in which racism has been obviously expressed in dangerous and fatal situations. Overall, Citizen actively works to enhance the perspective of citizens of our country and fight systematic racism by showing how the slightest animosity within can build and create dire situations, which end lives, yet continue oppression.

Works Cited

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Penguin Books, 2015.