Response To Claudia Rankin's Citizen: An American Lyric

I really enjoyed listening to Claudia Rankin’s presentation and her readings from her newest book of poetry, “Citizen: An American Lyric.” I really liked how she incorporated visual art with her poetry, because it means she spent the time analyzing her own work and the painting/picture in order to match them up. I was also really struck by the picture of the two white houses that had the street sign “Jim Crow” in between them. This is a very realistic picture; a lot of developments as far as I have seen, except for the “Jim Crow” street name, have very few black or Hispanic people living in there. There is only one black family that lives in the same development as my dad and zero Hispanic families.
Growing up, I attended Catholic school up until high school; the environment was completely different. In my Catholic school, …show more content…
I’ve heard comments from black girls saying to other black girls “she’s not black, she’s a white girl underneath, an oreo.” I, among many other white girls, had comments made about us, which sounded like “you’re too white to be doing that.” The fights that occurred were usually between blacks; you heard racial slurs—“Nigger, ghetto-ass nigger”—being shouted to one another as they threw another punch, or pushed the other into the lockers. So, after Claudia Rankin’s speech, I still believe that being racially color blind is a thing for many people and for many races. However, I also think that many are still ignorant to each race/culture and society has become accustomed to judging others by how they look and what color they are. Not every black person is a criminal, not every Muslim is a terrorist, not every white person is racist, and not every Hispanic is illiterate. Racism, sadly, is still a huge problem today on both ends of the spectrum, but not every person is a