We're All Citizens

The entirety of Citizen is super powerful and leaves no room for questions about the situation of black women in America. While there are several striking lines in the book as a whole, there were two in particular that stood out to me.

The first is on pages 52 and 53, and while this artwork I believe that the words within the art are extremely powerful. "I do not always feel colored. I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." These words seem simple enough, but when they are truly looked at they leave a very powerful message that cannot be compared. Personally, I don't really notice my skin color when I am in OPRF. I blend in with the rest of the crowd and never really notice when I am the only person with a dark skin color in my class. However, when the achievement gap was first brought to my attention, going to my AP and honors level classes became a much more uncomfortable experience. During my sophomore year, I was taking AP Psychology and after the documentary about the achievement gap became a more prominent discussion point, I became aware of the fact that I was one of two people of color in my class. While this was never addressed in the class, I started to become very aware of myself in my other classes. Being one of the only black people in the class becomes very noticeable when everyone else is pure white.

The other quote comes from page 85. "He said, I don't know what the water wanted. It wanted to show you no one would come." To me, this shows that there were individuals who knew that no one was going to come help them when they needed help the most. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was in desperate need of help from the rest of the country and the government. Considering that the government is mostly white males (a separate problem), they had absolutely no consideration for suffering blacks. The man who said this quote has noticed that this is the truth, and simply points out how obvious it is. The simple notion that white people won't help their fellow humans is something that can't be compared to. It's astonishing.