Other discriminations, however, are more cloaked and covert in nature, and manifest as insidious microaggressions, as indirect and quotidian indignities ranging from averted gazes at traffic stops, casual slurs at coffeehouses, misunderstandings and misconceptions between friends and colleagues, to careless, stray remarks like “I didn’t know black women could get cancer,” discriminations that are harder to spot because they’re often unintentional, sometimes even well-meaning, that appear innocuous on the surface but are just as detrimental and denigrating as more egregious forms of harassment and hostility. She suggests that racial discriminations exist as a variegated spectrum: Some take the form of blatant aggressions, like hate crimes, state-sanctioned infractions, and controversial laws (like “Stand Your Ground” and voter-registration laws), many of which function like de facto Jim Crow laws. She explores racism’s myriad manifestations, never losing sight of its historical roots, highlighting how it affects not only entire communities collectively but also their individual members, in different, physically and psychologically scarring ways. Through a recounting of her own experiences as well as reflections on the injustices meted out to other black Americans, especially black women like her, Rankine lays bare the systemic as well as interpersonal, intimate racisms that have led to a continual othering of black Americans. These violations settle in black bodies and are passed on as generational trauma, a trauma largely repressed but occasionally finding vent as hurt, embarrassment, horror, and rage, the kind now sweeping America.

They are regularly subjected to racism and colorism, at times when they least expect to be-while driving to work, taking the subway, meeting a real-estate agent, or visiting a therapist, among other mundane routines-and such prejudices can be confounding, destabilizing, and painfully hard to make sense of. Black Americans, to this day, Rankine reminds us, continue to be sidelined and deprived through residential isolation and through diminished access to housing, education, healthcare, and structural facilities.

In the wake of the recent protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, this book-winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the PEN Open Book Award-finds itself all the more relevant and also unnervingly prescient. Claudia Rankine’s provocative and polyphonic work, Citizen: An American Lyric, has spurred much-needed conversations around race and racism both in academia as well as in more informal discourse.

An american lyric claudia rankine