Eventually she stopped doing this, but she never acknowledged her slippage.” Her friend didn’t mean to hurt her, but she clearly managed to insult her on a deep level. “You assumed you two were the only black people in her life. On a personal level, the narrator had a friend who called her the name of her black housekeeper. Throughout the book, an attitude of ignorance toward black citizens is apparent. From the narrator’s personal, everyday experiences, to the hurtles Serena Williams has had to overcome, or accept, to the effect of Hurricane Katrina on black neighborhoods, Rankine portrays the ignorance and hatred black citizens are faced with … and as the loneliness and despair with which they cope. The themes of each insulting and hateful experience are vividly expressed. Because the book is told in the second person, each experience feels direct, like it could be happening to you. Examples in the book range widely, but in every instance, there is the same underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, dehumanization, and self-loathing experienced by the African American. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen details the various ways in which racism can be felt by a black citizen of America.
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