Poet Claudia Rankine And 'Just Us'

It's Been a Minute

NPR

Society & Culture, News, News Commentary, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

Poet Claudia Rankine is back with a new book called Just Us: An American Conversation. Much like her acclaimed 2014 book of poetry, Citizen: An American Lyric, her new volume offers an unflinching examination of race and racism in the United States — this time in conversations with friends and strangers. Guest host Audie Cornish talks to Rankine about what she learned about herself and others in these conversations, why she doesn't mind educating others about race, and how we move forward together in tough times.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, the whole thing of this dialogue is like,
0:02.7	you're so socialized as a black person, especially in white spaces,
0:06.5	to not talk about this stuff.
0:08.5	It really is part of the social contract of upward mobility of like, okay.
0:13.5	Yeah, exactly.
0:15.0	But let's not do that.
0:16.6	Let's not do that.
0:17.8	Let's not do that thing.
0:19.3	And because then you become the angry person, right?
0:22.5	Like, no, now you're, well, now I have to make you a trope.
0:26.0	And it just seemed like your whole book was just you violating the contract over and over and over again.
0:33.2	I know. That's why there's a such and that says social contract violated.
0:38.1	I know.
0:43.5	Oh my gosh.
0:48.2	You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:50.9	I'm Adi Cornish in for Sam Sanders.
0:53.3	On Today's show, the poet Claudia Rankin.
0:56.4	She's written many books of poetry,
0:58.5	but the one she's most known for is called Citizen, an American lyric.
1:03.2	It won several awards and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
1:06.8	That book focuses on the destructive nature of casual racism.
1:11.4	Citizen came out in 2014 after a summer that saw the deaths of Eric Carner and Michael Brown
	...

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