If you ask any
African-American man if they ever felt that a White peer racially profiled them,
most if not all will say yes. This could be something as causal as White people
deciding to walk on the other side of the street when you are walking towards
them, being followed throughout a store by security, or even getting stopped
because you look “suspicious” because you fit the profile. This theme of
fitting the description is one that Claudia Rankine utilizes in her book Citizen among Black men in white society.
By profiling, White society refuses to see African-Americans as individuals and
instead sees them as a collective unit riddled with stereotypes. They do not
see a person when profiling occurs, all that they see is a black body, and all
the assumptions that comes along with that black body. One of the first
examples of this in Citizen is when
the neighbor calls the cops on her friend, whom that neighbor had already met
previously. The neighbor knew the friend, but at the time, all that neighbor
saw was a black figure lurking in the shadows ready to strike on a helpless and
empty house. This is a more subtle way in which, white people refuse to see
anything other than a black body in front of them. The neighbors knew the
person, however in a moment of uncertainty they looked at a black frame and
assumed the worst.
Throughout Citizen, Rankine gives many examples of the
theme of fitting the description in American society by showing the names of
people who have been victims of police brutality and profiling. To the White
mind “there is always one guy who is always the guy fitting the description” when
it comes to Black men and this is seen throughout cases of wrongful convictions
and police brutality cases. (105).
Rankine repeats this quote because it signifies the presence of the black body
and what comes along with it. This entire book, in a way, is about blackness in
the physical form. This quote sums up
what it is like to be a black person in a white society. This feeling of
blackness in Citizen, is completely physical.
Black people continue to fall victim to this police brutality because “white
men can’t police their imagination” and do not see African-Americans beyond
their physical black body (135). Police
will constantly see a black body and assume the worst, because society has
conditioned themselves to see blackness as a physical element of suspicion and
violence. As a result, no matter the character that is actually within the
black body, they will only ever assume the worst because they refuse to look
beyond this black mass. Every black body fits the description, no matter who
you are. This universal conception of what blackness entails is socially rooted
in the racism that has been ingrained so deeply into American society that
white people even subconsciously equate black maleness to violence and aggression.
Many
people in white society refuse to look beyond the black body as a universal
entity and look more at the black body as an individual person. In Citizen, Claudia Rankine explores this
in a very personal way that any Black person can relate too. For many whites, this
black body isn’t a person, it’s more of a black mass that is full of destruction.
This trend is constantly blown up in people’s faces all over the news, and the
only way to do so is to confront it and talk about why this is constantly happening.
However; because many White people are uncomfortable talking about race and the
role that it plays in everyday interaction between White people and people of
color, these conversations are halted.
WC:623
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Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: an American lyric. , UK: Penguin Books, 2015.
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