{"id":153,"date":"2019-02-15T06:14:05","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T06:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/?page_id=153"},"modified":"2019-02-15T06:14:05","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T06:14:05","slug":"racial-perspectives","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/racial-perspectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial Perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comparing and Contrasting\u00a0Citizen<\/em> and\u00a0No Man’s Land<\/em><\/h1>\n

Eula Biss is white. Claudia Rankine is black. And yet, despite the stark contrast of their races, the novels <\/span>Notes from No Man\u2019s Land<\/span><\/i> by Biss and <\/span>Citizen<\/span><\/i> by Rankine share many similarities. They both elaborate on touchy subjects and explain to their audience the same concept of race through a white and black filter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBlack News\u201d and \u201cStop and Frisk\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Biss\u2019 essay \u201cBlack News\u201d entails the time she spent in San Diego working for a local newspaper. <\/span>The Voice and Viewpoint<\/span><\/i> was, in fact, an African American community newspaper, of which she was often the only white employee. But despite being white, Biss explains her cultural identity as African, Asian, and American, due to the flow of cultures in and out of her family. Through this essay, she explains the prejudices she witnessed amongst black people and how because of her white skin she is also subject to many assumptions. Through \u201cStop and Frisk,\u201d Rankine illustrates a similar message through the reiteration of \u201cand you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description\u201d (Rankine 105).<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cBlack News,\u201d Biss writes about elderly Ms. Johnson who desperately wanted custody of her grandchildren after they were taken from their mother. However, due to a small, seemingly insignificant infraction, the court kept keeping Ms. Johnson at bay, saying she needed 10, no 20, no infinite years between her and her infraction before she could gain custody of the kids. Because she wasn\u2019t the guy but she was the guy fitting the description. Because nurture can overtake nature, so black women shouldn\u2019t be sterilized but their kids should be painted white so they can disguise themselves against being the guy who fits the description. <\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cStop and Frisk,\u201d Rankine writes about the same prejudices, the ones that African Americans are aware of, the ones that make the chances of getting pulled over at night duplicate. You were pulled over because you were speeding but you weren\u2019t speeding. You are cuffed because you claim you weren\u2019t speeding. You retaliate because they expect you to speak out. They expect you to be aggressive. So you go through all this to prove your innocence, and in the end you\u2019re left feeling like a criminal because that\u2019s who they think you are. And you know that\u2019s who they think you are so who are you to believe otherwise? When Biss unsuspectingly asked a black couple about the borders of District 4, the man told his wife, \u201cHey, this girl wants to know where it\u2019s safe for her to go\u201d (Biss 77). <\/span><\/p>\n

Through these essays, Biss and Rankine spread the message that because society thinks you are a certain way, you will always be the one that fits the description, even if you\u2019re not the perpetrator of the act.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLetter to Mexico\u201d and \u201cI Do Not Always Feel Colored\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

In Biss\u2019 essay, \u201cLetter to Mexico\u201d, Biss dives into her feelings of not belonging as a <\/span>gringo<\/span><\/i> in Mexican culture. This idea connects with Rankine\u2019s image of the statement \u201cI feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background\u201d (Rankine 53). Through Biss\u2019 essay and Rankine\u2019s image, the message conveyed is that racism and bias happens to <\/span>any<\/span><\/i> minority group when surrounded by a different cultural group.<\/span><\/p>\n

When someone is different, they stand out. As soon as Biss left her little sanctuary of La Salina, she faced clear discrimination and hostility due to the fact she was white. She alluded to Hotel California when she said she could check out of the white city of La Salina any time she wanted to, but at the end of the day that was who she was. <\/span><\/p>\n

Rankine makes a similar statement with her image. She clearly shows through colors and stylistic elements that she feels colored when around people not like her, more specifically, white people. She feels colored when she walks into an interview with two white men and it\u2019s obvious that neither of them thought that was what she would look like. She feels colored when with a white friend and it\u2019s obvious which of the two of them is making others uncomfortable. She feels colored when racial slurs are used against her without second thought, and without any acknowledgment after the fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Biss conveys the same message but in a different way. She feels trapped in her own skin, having been exposed to so many cultures but not have the color to prove it. Biss is vulnerable and expresses her frustration through the quote, <\/span><\/p>\n

I felt sick with hatred then for my own people. If you had asked me then why I hated them, I might have said that I hated them for being so loud and for being so drunk. But now I believe I hated them for suddenly being my people, not just other people. In the United States, it is very easy for me to forget that the people around me are my people. It is easy, with all our divisions, to think of myself as an outsider in my own country. I have been taught, and I have learned well, I realize now, to think of myself as distinctly different from other white folks\u2013 more educated, more articulate, less crude. But in Mexico, these distinctions became as meaningless to me as they should have always been (Biss 93). <\/span><\/p>\n

When in Mexico, she becomes nothing more than the color of her skin, just as Rankine feels among a white majority in the US. In America, Biss likes to believe that she is more cultural and education and therefore superior due to her knowledge and exposure of different cultures, but the social reality is that she\u2019s white, and nobody will see otherwise. Rankine\u2019s social reality is one she and everyone around her are aware of. It\u2019s something she has had to deal with her entire life and will continue to deal with. But the fact that Biss\u2019 reality is the same shows just how much we rely on the color of a person\u2019s skin to tell us a story.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comparing and Contrasting\u00a0Citizen and\u00a0No Man’s Land Eula Biss is white. Claudia Rankine is black. And yet, despite the stark contrast of their races, the novels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-153","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","one-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155,"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/153\/revisions\/155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freestyleacademy.rocks\/~MahikaG\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}