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101 " I suppose if all I had to do was bleach my hair blond to stop white supremacists from wanting to burn crosses in my yard, I might consider blondness myself. Certainly, the forty-fifth president and his family understand the importance of the blond signifier in their campaign to Make America Great Again. "
― Claudia Rankine , Just Us: An American Conversation
102 " I don’t think white people identify themselves as white Americans. They think their perspective is objective. They don’t realize they’re always invested in the advancement of white people. "
― Claudia Rankine , The White Card: A Play
103 " Yes, and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on. "
― Claudia Rankine , Citizen: An American Lyric
104 " You have a destination that doesn't include acting like this moment isn't inhabitable, hasn't happened before, and the before isn't part of the now as the night darkens and the time shortens between where we are now and where we are going. "
― Claudia Rankine
105 " The man doesn't acknowledge you as you sit down because the man knows more about the unoccupied seat than you do. For him, you imagine, it is more like breath than wonder; he has had to think about it so much you wouldn't call it thought. "
106 " The sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter: Or; as there are billions of live, my sadness is alive alongside the recognition that billions of lives never mattered. "
― Claudia Rankine , Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
107 " Words work as release--well-oiled doors opening and closing between intention, gesture. "
108 " Her kind of security, because it's not merely monetary, is atmospheric and therefore is not transferable. It's what reigns invisible behind the term "white. "
109 " For all your previous understandings, suddenly incoherence feels violent. "
110 " A friend tells you he has seen a photograph of you on the Internet and he wants to know why you look so angry. You and the photographer chose the photograph he refers to because you both decided it looked the most relaxed. Do you look angry? You wouldn’t have said so. Obviously this unsmiling image of you makes him uncomfortable, and he needs you to account for that. If "
111 " If you were smiling, what would that tell him about your composure in his imagination? "
112 " People feel hurt when you point out the reality that forms experience because the reality is not their emotional experience. "
113 " For so long you thought the ambition of racist language was to denigrate and erase you as a person. After considering Butler’s remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please. "
114 " Your friend refuses to carry what doesn’t belong to her. You "
115 " You take in things you don’t want all the time. The second you hear or see some ordinary moment, all its intended targets, all the meanings behind the retreating seconds, as far as you are able to see, come into focus. Hold up, did you just hear, did you just say, did you just see, did you just do that? Then the voice in your head silently tells you to take your foot off your throat because just getting along shouldn’t be an ambition. "
116 " The sigh is the pathway to breath; it allows breathing. That’s just self-preservation. No one fabricates that. You sit down, you sigh. You stand up, you sigh. The sighing is a worrying exhale of an ache. You wouldn’t call it an illness; still it is not the iteration of a free being. What else to liken yourself to but an animal, the ruminant kind? "
117 " it is a clean displacement of effort, will, and disappointment. "
118 " No one can get behind the feeling that caused a pause in the match, not even the player trying to put her feelings behind her, dumping ball after ball into the net. Though you can retire with an injury, you can’t walk away because you feel bad. "
119 " The lack of an integrated life meant that no part of his life recognized the treatment of black people as an important disturbance. To not remember is perhaps not to feel touched by events that don’t interfere with your livelihood. This is the reality that defines white privilege no matter how much money one has or doesn’t have. From Appalachia to Fifth Avenue, my precarity is not a reality shared. "
120 " How to care for the injured body,the kind of body that can’t holdthe content it is living?And where is the safest place when that placemust be someplace other than in the body? "