Reader Response #3

STOP #1: pg.5 When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows.

Rankine relies heavily on the second person "you" to describe past, present and expected future events of racism and cultural insensitivity, so almost every reader can recognize these events. By using the second person "you", Rankine Involves her readers closely in the journey and progress of the text, and asks them to take a stand, or at least reflect the anger that every racist microaggression she describes in her readers’ minds. She aims and implicates readers to deal with the ancient stored pain in the collective consciousness of mankind. If we want to be free, we must work hard to resolve these pains. 

STOP #2: pg.12 The mother's response is barely audible-I see, she says. I'll sit in the middle

Rankin repeatedly sets the scene for incidents of shocking disappointment, abuse, aggression, or threats by the narrator or the parties involved. She described an encounter on a United Airlines flight when a female passenger turned to her mother and said “this is not what I expected”. After noting that she was assigned a seat next to a black woman. Ironically, a woman of color won the right to sit in that place, not only because she travels frequently, but also because she is a person with rights and freedoms that no one can challenge or deprive. 

STOP #3: pg.14 A friend argues that Americans battle between the “historical self”  and the “self self”.

Rankine compares the self and its parameters. Suddenly, each of us is given multiple situations of identity construction, one is a response to the historical narrative we inherited, and the other is obtained from our own innate precedence and persuasion. 

STOP #4: pg.14 mostly interact as friends with mutual interest and, for the most part, compatible personality

Here, Rankin argues that a person’s identity can not be completely separated from the past or present influencers of social forces, such as white supremacy and ascendancy, institutional racism and inequality. These social forces continue to influence and inform a person’s self and consciousness and social coordinates and interaction with people of different races or ethnic backgrounds.