54 pages • 1 hour read
Citizen: An American Lyric
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Microaggressions
Microaggression is a term used to describe the offhand, casual, fleeting degradation of marginalized people. Microaggressions can occur via an offhand remark, a glance, or a gesture. They suggest that in a world where more explicit forms of discrimination have been made illegal, racist ideology is still carried out via interactions that are so small as to be nearly unnoticeable by anyone other than marginalized group. One of the major themes of Citizen is the impact of these microaggressions on black people and how they connect to larger systems of racism.
Often, the text discusses these microaggressions in a level, detached tone. Writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, poet Holly Bass suggests that in doing so, Rankine “creates an intentionally disorienting experience, one that mirrors the experience of racial micro-aggressions her subjects encounter” (Bass, Holly. “Claudia Rankine's 'Citizen'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Dec. 2014.) Yet the text also explores the physical and emotional consequences of microaggressions and how their accumulation affects the spiritual and physical health of black Americans.
The Lie of “Post-Racial” America
The concept of “post-racial America” is the idea that the United States has overcome racial prejudice, and that the days of discrimination and racialized violence that have long plagued the country have been resolved. Throughout the text, Rankine consistently wants to dissuade the reader of the notion that this is even close to becoming a reality.
The microaggressions that Rankine tracks occur among the middle and upper classes, in professional and well-to-do settings. These are the kinds of typically liberal environments in which explicit racism is thought to be intolerable, yet Rankine shows that no sphere is free from racism. As Bass notes, Rankine wishes to show how the “potential to say a racist thing or think a racist thought resides in all of us, like an unearthed mine from a forgotten war” (Bass, Holly. “Claudia Rankine's 'Citizen'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Dec. 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/books/review/claudia-rankines-citizen.html.)
Citizenship
As the title of this book suggests, Rankine wants the reader to consider what it means to be a citizen of the United States. Blackness, as Rankine emphasizes throughout the book, is an inhibitor to being a full-fledged citizen, even in 21st-century America. To be African-American is to have a complicated relationship to one’s sense of belonging in America.
Rankine investigates the ways in which racism affects daily American social and cultural life, which causes certain people to be rendered politically and socially invisible. The book complicates our notion of citizenship as merely a legal designation. As Rankine shows, we must expand that definition to include a larger understanding of belonging and community, one built out of empathy, responsibility, and a commitment to equality. Rankine writes: “Yes, and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on” (151). Rankine suggests that African Americans are forced to accept racism and “let it go” in order to feel included in the larger body politic of the United States.
Unlock all 54 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Claudia Rankine
