What did you say
Dear Claudia Rankine,
I was struck by the power of your words. You wrote your lyric in second persons' perspective, which bring us back to the situations you have encountered in your real life. By describing "your" action, "your conversation", "your friends", my emotion resonate with yours. By your intimate, heart-aching and powerful words, I feel like I have personally experienced your experience. I particularly like how you described the implicit racism many people of color have experienced in daily lives. The neighbor mistook a black friend as a intruder and called the police; a psychologist assumed a black person is a hooligan instead of a patient just because of her skin color. And what did they say? They said sorry, they were so sorry. And there was nothing you and I could say. Apology does not make up for the fact that racism, though not expressed explicitly under political correctness, has deeply engrained in people, especially white people's mind.
It is those details and episodes that happened all the time and left people of color speechless. I could feel an anger as you mentioned--an anger that is created by one's historical identity, an anger that is so oppressed as people often take your pain as a joke.
Thank you for writing this lyric. I hope more people can read this and introspect on a personal, emotional level. Keep up with your good writing.
Sincerely,
Cynthia
I was struck by the power of your words. You wrote your lyric in second persons' perspective, which bring us back to the situations you have encountered in your real life. By describing "your" action, "your conversation", "your friends", my emotion resonate with yours. By your intimate, heart-aching and powerful words, I feel like I have personally experienced your experience. I particularly like how you described the implicit racism many people of color have experienced in daily lives. The neighbor mistook a black friend as a intruder and called the police; a psychologist assumed a black person is a hooligan instead of a patient just because of her skin color. And what did they say? They said sorry, they were so sorry. And there was nothing you and I could say. Apology does not make up for the fact that racism, though not expressed explicitly under political correctness, has deeply engrained in people, especially white people's mind.
It is those details and episodes that happened all the time and left people of color speechless. I could feel an anger as you mentioned--an anger that is created by one's historical identity, an anger that is so oppressed as people often take your pain as a joke.
Thank you for writing this lyric. I hope more people can read this and introspect on a personal, emotional level. Keep up with your good writing.
Sincerely,
Cynthia
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