Just Us: An American Conversation is a 2020 book and anthology of essays, poems, and personal anecdotes written by American author and poet Claudia Rankine. An “arrangement of essays, poems, and images [which] includes the voices and rebuttals of others,” it describes and outlines an ideal response to forms of racism in contemporary settings. The book received largely critical praise and positive reviews from critics, who described it as “lyrically exquisite” and a “visual and active inquiry into race.”
Summary
In Rankine’s book Just Us: An American Conversation, Rankine describes encounters throughout the course of her life in which she had to deal with the ignorance of others–the majority of those typically being white men. In the face of ignorance she began to tap into subjects that she believes aren’t discussed frequently enough. Rankine finds herself in numerous social situations where she feels she is being silenced. Claudia Rankine expresses the desire to ask men she encounters about their white privilege and their opinions on the matter. She refers back to an issue that happened during a police training seminar–a female officer in the audience draws attention to the leading officer’s statement concerning his dubious understanding of where the police brutality statistics comes from. When asked about the percentage of transgender victims of police brutality the female officer calls out his skewed perception through a lens of white privilege. The conflict was initiated when the officer said he did not understand the percentage of victims to police brutality because he and his friends had never encountered such situations. After she made her comment on his privilege, he said that the comment was extremely offensive. Rankine discloses how this particular situation led to her hesitation in calling out patriarchal privileges and asking the questions she wanted to ask. Eventually, she did ask those difficult questions in many of her future encounters.
Rankine acknowledges that her past experiences with people prepared her for the difficult questions she would have to ask. With further contact, she gathers responses on how others view whiteness and privilege. she integrates media and photography to expand her point on the conversation. She states that the only change whiteness wants is one that reflects itself. The more encounters with people she experiences, the more Rankine feels that change will only ever begin to occur when people come to terms with their whiteness. During a dinner party one of the guests mentioned that he was writing a book on the 2016 presidential election but failed to mention the role of racism when anti-black and anti-Latin racism, which Rankine believed was a factor in placing the current president in power. When she expressed her stance on the matter she was interrupted by the hostess and, although it was not verbally expressed, Rankine felt she was being silenced on the matter. She writes that the privileged majority don’t want change because change for them would mean having to think differently. Rankine describes another encounter with a man at Yale–he says that his son’s inability to get an early acceptance into Yale is a result of not being able to "play the race card".
With the images in her book, Rankine portrays how the media has played a significant role in the participation of racism. Like the images of a commercial that aired on TV where a Black man is placed inside a washing machine and out comes an Asian man. Rankine shares various images of a commercial that aired on television where a Black man gets stuffed into a washing machine and out comes an Asian man. Rankine felt as if they were making a clear statement on the preference of skin color in the world. She also introduced images of a video on YouTube with step-by-step on skin whitening where she expresses her issues with the normalization of skin whitening pointing out darker skin isn't quite accepted by society. Rankine takes the topic further by relating it to children and their early onset biases on race. By referring back to the doll studies where children are asked to pick either the White, doll or the Black doll. The children are asked questions such as “Which doll is the dumb one?” or “Which one is bad?” and children did show a preference for the White doll. She includes the input of Erin Winkler who argues that children do develop certain preferences because at a young they become aware of which social groups are favored as well as the societal norms.