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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Citizen: An American Lyric, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bigotry, Implicit Bias, and Legitimacy
Identity and Sense of Self
Anger and Emotional Processing
History and Erasure
Summary
Analysis
A man named Jayson Musson publishes videos on YouTube under the name Hennessy Youngman. These videos belong to a series he calls Art Thoughtz, in which he talks about contemporary art and teaches viewers about various topics in the art world. In one such video, he attempts to answer how a person might become a “successful black artist,” ironically setting forth the idea that the anger many black people feel as a response to racism is marketable. With this in mind, he suggests that black artists should adopt what he calls “an angry nigger exterior,” advising prospective black artists to watch footage of Rodney King’s beating while they work.
Citizen is a book that explores how people of color process the anger they feel in response to racism and injustice. In this section, Rankine turns to Hennessy Youngman to consider the implications of this sort of anger. Youngman’s suggestion is delivered in a tongue-in-cheek manner, effectively acknowledging that the art world has commodified black anger and made it oddly marketable. And though it might be true that art is capable of expressing complex emotions like outrage, it’s clear that the popularity of this kind of artistic expression most likely fails to properly consider the origins of race-related anger, meaning that the art world’s acknowledgement of how hard it is to cope with racism is superficial on the whole.
Themes
Hennessy Youngman’s ironic suggestions about black anger are intended to address the racist assumptions people have about black people, but they also speak to the fact that it is difficult for African American artists to reproduce genuine anger in their art. This is because “commodified anger” is first and foremost a performance, not a representation of the everyday pain and rage that arises in the face of constant racism and mistreatment. Aware of this dynamic, the protagonist wonders if her anger could ever be useful for anything, or if it will always leave her feeling depleted and worse off than before. After all, what Youngman doesn’t acknowledge is that racists often use black peoples’ anger against them, pointing to their rage to argue that they’re unstable or unadjusted to the world.
Youngman’s video spotlights the ways in which the art world has turned black anger into little more than a performance. In keeping with this, the protagonist is especially cognizant that even Youngman’s analysis fails to capture the emotional toll that racism takes on people of color, since Youngman is focused first and foremost on the commodification of anger, not the day in, day out psychological struggle of facing bigotry. This, in turn, leads the protagonist to consider anger in a broader sense, alerting readers to the unfortunate fact that even though anger is a reasonable response to racism, it often backfires. Accordingly, it becomes clear that there are very few—if any—productive ways of coping with the rage that accompanies racism.
Themes
While watching the 2009 tennis U.S. Open, the protagonist finds herself thinking that Serena Williams has lost her mind, since the tennis star becomes enraged at the various judges making calls against her. As the protagonists watches this play out, she has the sense that all of the injustice and mistreatment Williams has had to put up with throughout her career has finally reached a boiling point. She is, the protagonist realizes, unable to conceal her rage any longer. Watching Williams grow angrier and angrier in the predominantly white context of the professional tennis community, the protagonist recalls a line by the author Zora Neale Hurston: “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.”
The protagonist’s initial reaction to Serena Williams’s anger aligns with her previous acknowledgement that outrage often works against people of color—even if their anger is justified in the first place. As she continues to watch the tennis match, though, the protagonist finds herself capable of empathizing with Williams, since she herself knows what it’s like to encounter injustice and, more importantly, how hard it is sometimes to hide her anger. This dynamic is further exacerbated by the fact that Williams is in a predominantly white context, where people clearly have unexamined biases against her as a black woman. By turning to Hurston’s quote about feeling “most colored” when “thrown against a sharp white background,” the protagonist articulates not only how Serena Williams must feel at the U.S. Open, but also that the way the outside world perceives a person of color can actually bring itself to bear on how that person sees herself.
Themes
In 2004, the tennis umpire Mariana Alves made a number of unfair calls against Serena Williams on the last day of the U.S. Open. It was glaringly obvious to everyone that the serves Alves was claiming were out of the box were quite clearly inside of the box. And yet, Alves continued to uphold that, point after point, Williams’s serves were no good. At a certain point, Williams—exasperated—waved her finger back and forth at Alves in response to yet another bad call, saying “No, no, no.” Still, to the surprise of the match’s commentator’s, she was able to resist showing any more anger than this simple gesture.
This account of Serena Williams’s experience at the 2004 U.S. Open serves as background information for her later show of rage at the 2009 U.S. Open. In 2004, she manages to maintain her composure, even if she’s fuming inside because of the unfair calls Alves makes against her. This, of course, is similar to how the protagonist constantly feels angry but keeps herself from acting on her rage, knowing that it will most likely only be used against her in ways that could exacerbate the very situation that upset her in the first place. Once again, then, readers see how society effectively delegitimizes black people’s right to be angry, making it even harder to cope with racism and injustice.
Themes
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Along with many other viewers, the protagonist is certain as she watches the 2004 U.S. Open that Mariana Alves is making bad calls against Serena Williams because she can’t see past the fact that Williams is black. Williams ends up losing the match, which goes down in history as the match that prompted the professional tennis community to install a “line-calling technology” to ensure that every serve can be replayed. In the moment, though, all Williams can do is admit that she feels “cheated” in the aftermath of her unfair defeat. Watching this, the protagonist is incensed, and as time passes, she’s impressed that Serena Williams and her sister Venus are both able to move on from a number of similarly unfair calls—calls clearly based on the tennis community’s implicit bias against them.
By having the protagonist recall Serena Williams’s mistreatment at the 2004 U.S. Open, Rankine shows readers that Williams’s anger in 2009 has not come out of nowhere. In fact, it has been building for quite some time, but she has always kept it hidden from the public. That she eventually shows her outrage in 2009 therefore suggests that these kinds of situations accumulate until they reach a tipping point, rendering it all but impossible to respond to mistreatment with a passive, forward-looking attitude.
Themes
At the U.S. Open in 2009, Serena Williams doesn’t play well during a semifinal match, and when she loses the first set, she smashes her racket against the ground. Everyone watching is taken aback, and the umpire gives her a formal warning. Then, at the very end of the second set, the line judge claims that Williams stepped over the line while serving (something known as a “foot fault”). Williams can’t believe that the umpire has made this call, and when the sportscasters watch replays, they agree that there was no foot fault. However, the line judge sticks to her original call, even though most officiators wouldn’t even make this kind of a technical call at such an important moment, since it means that Williams will lose on a technicality.
As if it isn’t bad enough that Serena Williams has to face the normal pressures of playing a professional sport in a high-stakes context like the U.S. Open, she also has to contend with the umpire’s obvious bias against her. Considering that she has already been dealing with this kind of unfairness for years and years, it’s not all that surprising that she finally lets her anger show—after all, it has been building since 2004 (or most likely even before that, since she is one of the only women of color in the majority-white world of professional tennis).
Themes
The protagonist doubts that the line judge would have made this call against Serena Williams’s white opponent. Unable to contain her anger, Williams turns to the judge and says, “I swear to God I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God!” The protagonist acknowledges that this is an offensive “outburst,” but she also admires that Williams has responded instantly to the experience of “being thrown against a sharp white background.” Rather than holding herself back, Williams reacts to injustice in real time.
It makes sense that the protagonist admires Serena Williams for reacting immediately to injustice, since the protagonist often finds herself acquiescing to racism even though she’s extremely angry. Although she recognizes that anger often works against people of color, in this moment she appreciates William’s genuine outpouring of emotion and the bravery it must take for her to finally let people know how she really feels.
Themes
Serena Williams’s “outburst” has been building up for years, but this doesn’t stop people in the tennis community from criticizing her for overreacting. Instead of acknowledging her anger, people call her “insane.” Worse, she is fined $82,500. It is possible, of course, that part of this penalty has to do with the context in which Serena Williams displays her anger, since the event is televised, meaning that her swears have been widely broadcasted. However, the protagonist senses that this situation has very little to do with context and everything to do with racism. Although Williams’s anger makes sense, the predominantly white tennis community has decided that the rules that apply to everyone else do not apply to her, and that to react with anger to this injustice is to prove oneself “insane, crass, [and] crazy.”
The way people respond to Serena Williams’s very legitimate response to injustice accentuates just how unwilling society at large is to recognize racism. Instead of seeing Williams’s anger and stopping to think about the circumstances that upset her so much, the majority of the tennis community immediately condemns her and calls her “insane” or “crass.” In doing so, they ignore the racist implications of her mistreatment while simultaneously depriving her of the right to react to this mistreatment. As a result, they effectively make it impossible for her to emotionally process injustice.
Themes
At the 2011 U.S. Open two years later, Serena Williams is playing poorly in an important match. Everyone expected her to win this match, especially since it takes place on the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. By winning, it seems, Serena Williams will be seen as a celebrated patriot and will finally be accepted by everyone in the tennis community. However, she isn’t doing well. When she finally hits a good ball that her opponent will certainly be unable to return, she yells “Come on!” in celebration. In response, the umpire declares that Williams interfered with her opponent by yelling. Turning to the umpire, Williams asks if she’s is trying to “screw her again.”
Serena Williams is once more at the center of the tennis world’s attention, apparently having moved on from what happened at the 2009 U.S. Open. This, it seems, is what people of color are constantly forced to do: put their anger behind them and go on without dwelling on the past. However, this is obviously an incredibly difficult—and perhaps impossible—thing to do, and Williams’s question to the umpire about if she’s trying to “screw her again” indicates that the injustice of the past isn’t truly behind her at all.
Themes
The umpire in question isn’t the same person as the line judge who made the bad call against Serena Williams in 2009, but the protagonist understands that Williams is recalling the many times she has been mistreated in the past. For her, “daily diminishment is a low flame, a constant drip.” Having to live with this reality, she eventually finds herself unable or unwilling to hide her anger, so she tells the umpire to not even look at her, saying, “Don’t look my way.”
The protagonist correctly identifies that a large part of Serena Williams’s anger in this moment has to do with all of the injustice and biases and bigotry she has had to face in the past. For this reason, it’s even harder for her to hide her anger when the umpire makes a bad call against her—after all, the racism she has experienced throughout her life has manifested itself as a “daily diminishment,” one that constantly affects her. In turn, it’s unsurprising that she yells at the umpire, who has only added to the “low flame” of her anger.
Themes
Just one year later, Serena Williams wins two gold medals at the 2012 Olympic Games. To celebrate her final win, she does a small dance that lasts all but three seconds. This dance upends the entire tennis community, as commentators and media personalities criticize her for “Crip-Walking all over the most lily-white place in the world.” According to these people, her celebration is unacceptable and inappropriate—or, to use their word, “classless.”
The way the tennis community and the media react to Serena Williams’s brief celebratory dance is in direct alignment with the way they responded to her anger in 2009. No matter what she does, it seems, she cannot show emotion without attracting all kinds of racially inflected criticism. Once more, then, readers see just how much society interferes with the ways in which people of color process emotion—an unfortunate fact that demonstrates just how hard it is to escape or ignore the many insensitive and problematic perspectives that have made their way into contemporary times.
Themes
Later in 2012, a white tennis player named Caroline Wozniacki imitates Serena Williams on the tennis court by putting towels in her shorts and shirt, accentuating her body’s curves in an apparent attempt to match Williams’s frame. She does this as a joke, thinking it’s “all in good fun.” Media outlets question whether or not people should be offended or “outrage[d]” by this racist display. As this plays out, the protagonist senses that this obviously racist joke is an embodiment of how the white tennis community sees Serena Williams. By imitating Williams in a blatantly racist way, the protagonist realizes, Wozniacki has managed to represent the way people in the sport see Williams while “leaving [her] ‘angry nigger exterior’ behind.”
Caroline Wozniacki’s behavior is racist. However, the tennis community and the media largely refuse to admit this, instead trying to frame her unkind and problematic imitation of Williams as nothing but a joke. This is similar to the way that the racist man in line at Starbucks acted like he didn’t understand why the protagonist was upset by his use of the n-word. In both cases, it becomes extremely difficult to address racism because the very people acting in bigoted ways refuse to recognize the problems inherent to their own behavior. This, in turn, delegitimizes a person of color’s right to be angry, thereby shutting down the only reasonable response to such blatant mistreatment.
Themes
