Sunday, January 3, 2016

Citizen Part 1 of 3

Claudia Rankine's Citizen covers issues of race on the spectrum of small micro-agressions to larger conflicts of race. In one part of the book, she discusses a situation where a woman places herself between a young child and herself. This falls somewhere near the "micro-aggression" end of the spectrum.

But what this also shows is that children have nullified concept of race, which is formed through experiences such as these. Race is something that children quickly become conscious of as they grow and realize the events happening around them.

My Spanish teacher told a story to our class once about family friends of his who he and his wife had  dinner with. They were from a rural area of Illinois, where I suspect diversity was not as commonplace as it is in ours. As their dinner discussion continued, they talked about how they haven't had the 'race' conversation yet with their preschool daughter. It had not occurred to him that that is a conversation that one must even have with their children.

I assume that Rankine's audience in Citizen was intended for teenagers and older. However, children are still present in the interactions that we have in race. Race is something that children learn more and more about every day. And while conversations about race are important, we must be careful in what ways we define race towards children.

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