Citizen: An American Lyric

“Sister Evelyn must think these two girls think a lot alike or she cares less about cheating and more about humiliation or she never actually saw you sitting there.” 

Whatever the reason, racism is ultimately the explanation as to why Sister Evelyn allowed this cheating to occur. This quote lends itself to the at-once invisibility and hypervisibility the subject of Citizen experiences is made to experience.

“What did you say? Instantaneously your attachment seems fragile, tenuous, subject to any transgression of your historical self. And though your joined personal histories are supposed to save you from misunderstandings, they usually cause you to understand all too well what is meant.”

Rankine describes the inner struggle between every Americans’ “historical self” and their “self self.” That is, given America’s history of slavery and racial injustice, every person has a connection to— either profiting from or being hindered by—this legacy. This concept is important to understanding many of the larger themes of the book.

“For years you attribute to Serena Williams a kind of resilience appropriate only for those who exist in celluloid. Neither her father nor her mother nor her sister nor Jehovah her God nor NIKE camp could shield her ultimately from people who felt her black body didn’t belong on their court, in their world. From the start many made it clear Serena would have done better struggling to survive in the two-dimensionality of a Millet painting, rather than on their tennis court—better to put all that strength to work in their fantasy of her working the land, rather than be caught up in the turbulence of our ancient dramas, like a ship fighting a storm in a Turner seascape.”

Rankine references painting and the visual arts, driving home the importance of visual elements to this text and to life at large. This section brings up the idea of black bodies existing in a two-dimensional space.