To Talk Back is To....

Talking back it typically considered a bad thing to do. You're not supposed to talk back to your parents, your teachers, people who are older, more "mature" and "smarter" than you (If you couldn't tell I thinks that's a bit of bull, but anyway). Talking back does have it's benefits, such as bringing forward questions and exposing certain social dynamics that we didn't think were in place.

Rankine brings many questions about dynamics when on page sixteen of Citizen after "she" remarks on a man calling some teenagers niggers and then proceeds to imply he is going "all KKK on them" she writes,

The people around you have turned away from their screens. The teenagers are on pause. There I go? you ask... something about hearing yourself repeating this stranger's accusation in a voice usually reserved for you partner makes you smile. 

Although this is not an example of talking back in the traditional teenager sense, it is still "talking back" at some level. This would be BECAUSE "talking back" has a connotation of negating an others opinion, or orders, even though their opinion has more "value" than your own. Take the example of the teenager and their mother. The teenager wants to wear a certain outfit to school but her mom says know, than the teenager goes onto complain about how the mother is being unfair, and how 'all the other girls' will be wearing this or that, than the mom exclaims 'don't talk back to me Missy or you'll be grounded for a month without allowance'. Cliche, I know

Any way, point is that, cliche situation or not, talking back is actually a form of placing value on one persons opinion or ideas over another. This is important to Rankine because when "she" talks back to the stranger, making the comment about not going "all KKK on" the teenagers, the people around them actually pause and listen (16). Before though no one batted an eyelash at the fact stranger called the teens "niggers" yet "she", by saying "no need to get all KKK on them" causes a great stir among the crowd of the Starbucks (16).

Every one seems startled that a black women responded to a, presumably, white man's derogatory comment with a derogatory comment. Almost as though because she was black, and maybe partially because she was a women, she should have accepted the fact that the man said what her did an not thought or said anything of it. Yet "she" did, and because of that "she" can no longer be dismissed.

My point, in this seeming-less stream of ramble, is that "talking back" is truly just one of the other ways people continue, create, and cultivate power structures within society. Although I don't think it is possible for humans to exist without a form of structure, I do believe that using such structures to dis-empower the word of an other is, in all honesty, hideous, especially when done without thought and then disregarded with out contemplation.