History and Erasure Theme Analysis

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen provides a nuanced look at the many ways in which humanity’s racist history brings itself to bear on the present. Considering what she calls the “social death of history,” Rankine suggests that contemporary culture has largely adopted an ahistorical perspective, one that fails to recognize the lasting effects of bigotry. This ahistorical perspective ignores that the present is directly linked to past injustices, as they inform the way people of color are treated in contemporary times. In addition, Rankine also considers how society’s eagerness to disregard history influences people of color on a personal level, forcing them to endure a “daily diminishment,” one that develops over time and “blossoms out of history.” While society at large erases the past, then, people of color are left to grapple with an entire history of racism that thoroughly impacts their own lives. By directing attention to this fraught dynamic, Rankine condemns ahistorical attitudes about race, indicating that this kind of ignorance exacerbates the discrimination and injustice that black people still face today.

Early in Citizen, Rankine reminds readers of the inarguable fact that places like the United States have been built upon a history of racism and injustice. On the second page, she presents “Jim Crow Rd.,” a photograph by the artist Michael David Murphy. The picture is of a seemingly upper-middle class suburban neighborhood with clean driveways and tidy white houses in the background. In the foreground, though, a sign indicates that an adjacent street is called Jim Crow Road, in reference to the racist Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the U.S. Calling attention to this picture, Rankine accentuates the troubling fact that the vestiges of the United States’ racist history still exist in the present—indeed, the country’s dark past is woven throughout the very structures of daily life. “Jim Crow Rd.” reminds viewers not only of the nation’s racist policies in the aftermath of slavery (policies that extended well into the 20th century), but also that contemporary America isn’t cut off or insulated from its problematic history. To the contrary, evidence of that history crops up wherever a person might look. And yet, the juxtaposition between this street sign’s reminder and the affluent, peaceful neighborhood in which it exists speaks to something even more unsettling—namely, that society tends to overlook or even approve of the most glaring reminders that racism and bigotry are still very much alive in contemporary times.

The United States’ racist history affects how people behave in the present, and this manifests in many unfortunate ways. To demonstrate this, Rankine considers a number of cultural events in which black people have either been murdered or completely forgotten about by those in power. For instance, she references the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old black boy who was fatally shot in a gated community by a member of the neighborhood watch. Similarly, Rankine also references the death of James Craig Anderson, an African American man killed in a hate crime in Mississippi. In addition, she revisits the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when many predominantly black communities were left to their own devices by national relief organizations. Turning to these recent instances of violence, injustice, and mistreatment, Rankine shows readers that it’s illogical and irresponsible to think racism is a thing of the past. To that end, she invites readers to reflect upon the notion that letting street signs like “Jim Crow Rd.” go unquestioned might cultivate a certain tolerance for racism. By choosing to see such things as nothing but relics from the past, society simultaneously ignores and assures the continuation of bigotry.

One of the most important implications that Rankine makes by focusing on the “social death of history” is that this kind of forgetfulness—this society-wide unwillingness to recall the recent past—benefits racist white people while hurting black people. By turning away from the horrors of history, white people in positions of power seemingly erase any cultural guilt they might have surrounding white people’s historic persecution of black people. What’s more, this willful ignorance makes it harder for black people to advocate for themselves while experiencing discrimination, since it’s difficult to argue that contemporary injustices belong to a broader pattern of oppression when society refuses to recognize that pattern in the first place. This is perhaps most glaringly obvious in Rankine’s discussion of the famous African American tennis player Serena Williams and the racist treatment she has received at the hands of the professional tennis community’s umpires and commentators. When umpires have made unfair calls against her in the past, commentators have said racially charged things about her various responses. Worse, the entire tennis community has refused to acknowledge that their reception of Williams is impacted by the sport’s historical whiteness impacts their reception of Williams, acting as if their racist criticisms of Williams are completely divorced from a tradition of bigotry. Unable to successfully point out these injustices, then, Williams is forced to endure a sense of “daily diminishment.” “Every look, every comment, every bad call blossoms out of history,” Rankine writes, underscoring how infuriating it is to find oneself unable to challenge contemporary society’s willful ignorance—an ignorance that denies the fact that racism “blossoms out of history” and that it flourishes in the present precisely because of that denial.