Just Us: An American Conversation

Rankine wonders what it means to reiterate conversations, which can be a way to examine oneself “in relation to another, an other” (206).

Rankine recalls the conversation between Eartha Kitt, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Lady Bird Johnson. Kitt questioned the Johnson administration’s pursuit of war in Vietnam, which was destroying American youth. She also validated the counterculture’s rebellion in response to what they perceived to be an unjust war. Supposedly, Lady Bird Johnson cried in response to Kitt’s comments.

Rankine then transcribes the 911 call that a Starbucks employee made to complain about two Black men waiting in the café. She next transcribes a conversation between a white woman and Black man, in which the former is trying to prevent the latter from entering his own building of residence. Rankine transcribes two additional conversations—another 911 call in which a white woman reports a Black vendor who is selling water in a park without a permit, and a conversation between a white man and a Black man in which the former, a security guard in a hotel, is questioning a Black man’s status as a guest. Finally, there is a short monologue from a white woman publicly telling an unidentified woman to go back to wherever she had come from.