When Claudia Rankine Brought Up Race In Couples Counseling

Death, Sex & Money

Slate Podcasts

Business, Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Careers, Relationships, Sexuality

4.6 • 7.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The poet reflects on growing up in largely white spaces in the Bronx during the 1970s, and how conversations about race with her husband have evolved over 20 years together.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I think when I got cancer, suddenly you don't feel that your life is in front of you in the same way.
0:11.0	Any more, you feel like you know, you now are on the clock.
0:15.0	And, you know, the fantasy is that you could do it a different way, experience something else.
0:24.0	It's almost like I had a mid-like crisis, but instead of it being brought on by middle age, it was brought on by illness.
0:37.0	This is Death, Sex, and Money.
0:40.0	The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot, and need to talk about more. I'm Anna Sail.
0:57.0	Claudia Rankin does not flinch from direct conversations, in her personal life and in her poems and writing.
1:04.0	In her latest book, Just Us, Claudia goes right at the tensions and often unspoken dynamics that she experiences as a black woman with white people, her white husband, her white friends and colleagues, and a white stranger she encountered at an airport a few years ago.
1:22.0	And then comes up to me in Southwest line because they line you up by numbers. And he says to me, you know, I just need to know your number because I don't want to cut you off. I don't want to get in front of you.
1:35.0	And I say on number 10, he says, OK, on number 8. So he gets in front of me. And he says to me, I love airplanes because it's the one time I can just relax and not have to listen to the news.
1:51.0	I can't stand the news.
1:54.0	And I said to him, well, you shouldn't have voted for him.
1:59.0	Oh, you did.
2:01.0	Wait.
2:02.0	How did you know, like what was your read on him? What did you notice about who he was that made you feel like you could say that?
2:09.0	Well, one that he, 62% of white men who voted voted for Trump.
2:16.0	And I'm, you know, often I'm traveling for so I'm traveling in business class or first class.
2:26.0	And I assume and maybe the assumption is incorrect, but I assume that because many of these men can make the claim that they're they're making a decision based on economics.
2:43.0	You know, because often I'll hear I voted for him because of the economy.
2:49.0	So I just said you shouldn't have voted for him.
2:52.0	And that man did not speak to me again.
2:55.0	He said he did say to me, it's not just him.
	...

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