Week 5 - Carol Anderson to Claudia Rankine

Dear Ms. Rankine,

I haven't stopped thinking about the quote you drew upon in Citizen: An American Lyric from Zora Neale Hurston:

"I feel most colored when I am thrown against a white background."

Together, I believe our books convey the personal and the political worlds of the fraught race relations we find ourselves in today.  As black women authors, we both achieve this by inserting ourselves into the too often "white background" of historiography and literature. I want to congratulate us both on this feat and let you know how meaningful your book was for me.

I spent many years researching how white rage turned every sign of progress in the black population into a violent program of oppression, from reconstruction to education to the Civil Rights movement to Obama's Presidency. While I do a convincing job of providing evidence for this evolution of oppression (if I may say so myself), one thing I can't do is what you achieve in Citizen: articulate how racism shows up in our lives in ways that history ignores. So many of the experiences you outline hit home for me. I hope they hit home for my white friends, too. I hope they hit home for my white colleagues who engage with me on topics of racial history while simultaneously undermining my place at the table as a black woman.

Many of the racist experiences and the societal racism (evidenced by Serena William's career, for example) outlined in your book are saturated in the centuries of white rage that my historical contributions explore. I envision classrooms where students read our books side by side. I will encourage my friends and family to do so, too.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,
Carol Anderson

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