Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fracoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hey everyone, thank you for being here. This
Speaker 1: past week has been It's been a rollercoaster for a ride.
Speaker 1: I'm dying to get off of. Holy shit. As of
Speaker 1: this taping, Donald J. Trump is at Walter Reed Military Hospital.
Speaker 1: His chief of staff Mark Meadows said that the president's
Speaker 1: by over the last twenty four hours were very concerning
Speaker 1: and the next forty eight hours will be critical in
Speaker 1: terms of his care. We're still not on a clear
Speaker 1: path to a full recovery now. Before we get to
Speaker 1: Claudia Rankin today, there's been a lot of conversation around
Speaker 1: civility about how people on the left are celebrating a
Speaker 1: family's illness. But I just want to clear something up,
Speaker 1: because no one is celebrating illness, at least not intentionally.
Speaker 1: What they are celebrating is the potential end of an era,
Speaker 1: a conclusion on this administration, an administration that has cost
Speaker 1: thousands of lives and its handling of the coronavirus, an
Speaker 1: administration that has separated children from their families at the border,
Speaker 1: has locked up non violent, tax paying Mexicans, has called
Speaker 1: our troops suckers, and losers, has spewed misogyny, assaulted women,
Speaker 1: mocked the disabled community, threatened the free press, circumvented and
Speaker 1: bent the law at his own will Lide Lide, and
Speaker 1: Lide paid seven hundred and fifty dollars in federal income tax.
Speaker 1: They are celebrating the end of all this, the potential
Speaker 1: end of all this. No one wishes this virus on anyone,
Speaker 1: or at least I don't, But cosmically, karmically, this is
Speaker 1: about the only thing in twenty twenty that has made
Speaker 1: sense so far. So I wish President Trump a recovery,
Speaker 1: I wish his family well, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: saying goodbye to them come November. Outside of this maddening week,
Speaker 1: we are still navigating this larger conversation on race in America,
Speaker 1: and there are few people wiser and smarter on this
Speaker 1: subject than poet, author, and professor Claudia Rankin. You likely
Speaker 1: first heard of Rankin back in twenty fourteen when she
Speaker 1: published Citizen, an American Lyric. It was a ground breaking
Speaker 1: piece of long form poetry, and in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: Michael Brown's murder and the ensuing protests in Ferguson, this
Speaker 1: text became essential a rallying cry, a portrait of pain
Speaker 1: within the black community. It described racial relations as they
Speaker 1: were and as they still are. Her latest book is
Speaker 1: called Just Us, an American Conversation. It is the natural
Speaker 1: evolution of citizen, a continuation of a conversation that needs
Speaker 1: to keep happening. Her focus in this book was to
Speaker 1: have difficult conversations with white people, strangers, friends, family, about
Speaker 1: how they think or don't think about their own whiteness.
Speaker 1: It has one foot in the past and one foot
Speaker 1: in the present. Literally. On the left side pages, there
Speaker 1: are citations in footnotes passages from American history. On the
Speaker 1: right side pages, there's her writing set in the now.
Speaker 1: The brilliance of Just Us is that it turns these large,
Speaker 1: systemic problems into digestible quandaries. Her approach is more granular.
Speaker 1: She's focused on situations you may find in your day
Speaker 1: to day life, interactions at a grocery store, a dinner party,
Speaker 1: a theater, an airplane, a college dorm. In this book,
Speaker 1: she turns the theoretical into a reality. And regardless of
Speaker 1: the outcome in November, these difficult conversations will still be
Speaker 1: necessary even if we receive a President Biden and a
Speaker 1: vice president, Harris, we need to keep talking, we need
Speaker 1: to keep listening, and we need to keep crowing. I
Speaker 1: hope this conversation helps you with that, as it did me.
Speaker 1: But before we get into it, let's start with some
Speaker 1: backstory on why this talk with Claudia means so much
Speaker 1: to me. Enjoy Claudia Rangin, I started this show four
Speaker 1: years ago. In the beginning, no one said yes to
Speaker 1: coming out on this podcast. I admit you did not
Speaker 1: say yes to coming on this podcast. I don't vault
Speaker 1: you for this, but I wanted to say this at
Speaker 1: the top. When I began the show, I made a
Speaker 1: list of about ten people that I wanted to sit
Speaker 1: with and you were on that list. Thank you, so
Speaker 1: thank you for being here. I appreciate it. Four years later. Well,
Speaker 1: you say it's just patience. They say it's a virtue.
Speaker 1: I'm working on that. No, I'm not saying it's a virtue.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying patience. Okay, So how are you actually
Speaker 1: doing right now? Well, I think I'm there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that's totally fine. I'm home with my family,
Speaker 1: I don't have to travel. I can be on your
Speaker 1: podcast and not leave my house. Which is great. And
Speaker 1: then there's a part of me that's terrified, terrified about
Speaker 1: where the country is, what's coming, the virus, the spikes
Speaker 1: that are expected in the fall, the fact that two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people dead almost what does that mean for
Speaker 1: families across the country. And there's been no grieving as
Speaker 1: a country, no leadership from the top. So those are
Speaker 1: the two parts of me that make the whole. Where
Speaker 1: do you think your new book fits into those two
Speaker 1: parts of you? I think right in the center. The
Speaker 1: question of conversation is a question of what can we
Speaker 1: build together? Because the country is so broken on so
Speaker 1: many different levels and in ways that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be. That's what's tragic about it. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that everybody should have the same political positioning or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but the divisiveness that has been nurtured by
Speaker 1: this presidency is outrageous. It's singular in my lifetime. You
Speaker 1: said that going into Citizen, your previous book, that you
Speaker 1: wanted to find language to mark the unmarked, the quotidian
Speaker 1: experiences and instances where you'd felt diminished, assaulted, ignored, And
Speaker 1: in turn, for that book, you called your black friends
Speaker 1: and asked about a time where they were doing something
Speaker 1: ordinary in their life and then someone close to them
Speaker 1: did something or said something that made them realize that
Speaker 1: in their eyes, they are no one. What was your
Speaker 1: framework going into just us? What if we just tried
Speaker 1: to speak to each other about these issues that we
Speaker 1: have not talked about about whiteness, about how being in
Speaker 1: a country where white supremacy is foundational to our day
Speaker 1: to day lives and where anti blackness is normalcy can
Speaker 1: we talk about these things? And one of the early
Speaker 1: essays in the book is me just going up to
Speaker 1: white men and asking them about white privilege as a
Speaker 1: way to start. Do you want to describe one of
Speaker 1: those early instances. I was teaching class and called the
Speaker 1: construction constructions of Whiteness, and many of my students just
Speaker 1: interviewed people, their family members, their suite mates. So I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I could try that. I'll talk to somebody. I don't
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time talking to it. Despite being
Speaker 1: married to a white man. Strange, white men are not
Speaker 1: people I just fall into conversation with. Because I travel,
Speaker 1: or I used to travel for work so much, I
Speaker 1: decided to just use that time in airports and on
Speaker 1: airplanes approaching white men. If they seemed open to talk
Speaker 1: about race, many of them seemed trepidacious because it doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: and so that to me was fair, a fair opening.
Speaker 1: But the conversations all went in different ways, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to document them and then look at them and
Speaker 1: take them apart in terms of what I was thinking,
Speaker 1: what they might have been thinking. What are the facts
Speaker 1: behind the things that both of us thought. There's a
Speaker 1: passenger on the plane, and you're in flight, and this
Speaker 1: person is someone that you have, by your description, a
Speaker 1: pretty easy, comfortable rapport with. I think there's some bonding
Speaker 1: over the commodorees. He then mentions Bruce Springsteen that's where
Speaker 1: he lost me personally. He then arrives at a line
Speaker 1: where he says, I don't see color. And it's a
Speaker 1: line that is presented to be fairly innocuous, but in
Speaker 1: your estimate, has very real issues. What are those issues
Speaker 1: that you think people should be thinking about? Well, that man,
Speaker 1: I really liked him. I really thought, Oh, if I
Speaker 1: met you in another place, we'd be friends. And in
Speaker 1: fact we have become friends. He and his wife and
Speaker 1: my husband and I met for dinner and we've emailed
Speaker 1: a number of times, but at the time that I
Speaker 1: don't see color. To me, when people say that, it's
Speaker 1: a way of putting race under the carpet, which means
Speaker 1: then you're not acknowledging the ways in which racial difference
Speaker 1: in racial inequities are at play all the time. And
Speaker 1: if that kind of blindness is there, then who am
Speaker 1: I talking to. So in that conversation I did say
Speaker 1: to him, an I black woman. And maybe this is
Speaker 1: on fear to him, but you get the sense sometimes
Speaker 1: that white people, in these conversations with black people, I
Speaker 1: feel like they have really put themselves out and are
Speaker 1: proud of themselves for engaging. And so my fantasy was
Speaker 1: that he would go home and say to his wife,
Speaker 1: I had this great conversation with this black woman, and
Speaker 1: so if you're able to label me as a black woman,
Speaker 1: then it's disingenuous to tell me you don't see color.
Speaker 1: It's completely disingenuous. And this problem of color blindness is
Speaker 1: one that predates the man on the plane. Of course,
Speaker 1: in your book, you cite the historic case of Plessy v. Ferguson.
Speaker 1: I'd like to quote from the Court's ruling, Justice John
Speaker 1: Harland wrote, in the view of the Constitution, in the
Speaker 1: eye of the law, there is in this country no superior,
Speaker 1: dominant ruling class of citizens. Our constitution is color blind
Speaker 1: and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. That was
Speaker 1: written in eighteen ninety six. It still feels relevant in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. How do you think we dispel this notion
Speaker 1: of color blindness. Well, I think to call it out
Speaker 1: is one way to do it. I think that if
Speaker 1: you stay in the falseness of a narrative, then the
Speaker 1: narrative continues. But if you call it out, if you
Speaker 1: name it, if you say, you know, this is where
Speaker 1: a compliment, this is how it's incorrect, then a person
Speaker 1: would have to think twice before they insisted on it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you might decide, I don't care what Claude says,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say I'm color blind, but you would
Speaker 1: have thought about what I said, dismissed it, and then
Speaker 1: gone forward. And that, to me is preferable than just
Speaker 1: being in an automatic, repetitious framework. So much of this
Speaker 1: book is you interrogating your friendships with white people, and
Speaker 1: you often come back to this refrain that I admit
Speaker 1: is kind of heartbreaking, which is I thought I knew
Speaker 1: these people. I thought I intimately understood them, but their
Speaker 1: actions have revealed to me that I don't entirely understand them.
Speaker 1: And I wondered if in writing this book, you thought
Speaker 1: back to what your mother told you when you moved
Speaker 1: from Jamaica to New York City at age seven. She
Speaker 1: told you two very important things. One that public school
Speaker 1: is awful, and two, you cannot trust white people. We
Speaker 1: moved here in the late sixties early seventies, so she
Speaker 1: would have known about the string of assassinations that had
Speaker 1: happened from Martin Music King going backwards, and it was
Speaker 1: an incredibly racially volatile time in the country, and as
Speaker 1: a woman in her thirties moving from Jamaica to New
Speaker 1: York City, I think people had said to her, you know,
Speaker 1: the public schools aren't good, and that's probably because schools
Speaker 1: that had black children have been abandoned by the state
Speaker 1: with white flight and all of those kinds of dynamics
Speaker 1: that end up running the schools into the ground. The
Speaker 1: idea of trusting, how could you trust when these people
Speaker 1: were all being killed? So I think that was the
Speaker 1: framework behind her telling us that at the time, But
Speaker 1: did you ever think back on your mother's words, especially
Speaker 1: while writing this book, as your trust and white people
Speaker 1: was tested over and over again? Doesn't know? I think
Speaker 1: friendship is something that begs the question of being known
Speaker 1: and knowing, like you're my friend, I know you and
Speaker 1: you know me, and then suddenly no, you're my friend,
Speaker 1: but I actually don't know you. We can all imagine,
Speaker 1: for example, that Amy Cooper might have had some black
Speaker 1: friends who were like, oh my god, she said what
Speaker 1: she did? What? So these moments when white people I
Speaker 1: like to say, and it's sort of a joke for me,
Speaker 1: but in some way it's not a joke. It's like
Speaker 1: when white people go white, and and by that I
Speaker 1: mean suddenly they utilize their whiteness and depend upon the
Speaker 1: structures of white supremacy to protect them. So in Amy
Speaker 1: Cooper's case, it would have been, how dare you speak
Speaker 1: to me? You can't tell me what to do. This
Speaker 1: is a Central Park Birding tobaccle between Christian Cooper and
Speaker 1: Amy Cooper. But when he asked her to put her dog,
Speaker 1: her dog on a leash, that was a black man
Speaker 1: telling this white woman what to do, and she clearly
Speaker 1: couldn't stand it, so suddenly the park is her part.
Speaker 1: And I think in those moments you see white people
Speaker 1: reverting back to what they really believe connected to who
Speaker 1: they are as white people, because that's the kind of
Speaker 1: mobility they have in the world. On the subject of
Speaker 1: white privilege, I wanted to quote page fifty five from
Speaker 1: your book, you write I had accepted it as the truth.
Speaker 1: As social justice activist Ruby Sales would say about the
Speaker 1: culture of whiteness, the lack of an integrated life meant
Speaker 1: that no part of his life recognize the treatment of
Speaker 1: black people as an important disturbance. To not remember is
Speaker 1: perhaps not to feel touched by events that don't interfere
Speaker 1: with your livelihood. This is the reality that defines white privilege.
Speaker 1: No matter how much money one has doesn't have from
Speaker 1: Appalachia to Fifth Avenue, My procarity is not a reality shared.
Speaker 1: Do you still accept that truth about whiteness? I do,
Speaker 1: and I think it's the given. White people are living
Speaker 1: a different life from other people, and it means that
Speaker 1: they have a mobility to move around, to enter their homes,
Speaker 1: to get in their cars without anybody asking them to
Speaker 1: justify ownership or their movements. Per se and this is
Speaker 1: not just I'm not talking about police even I'm talking
Speaker 1: about your neighbors, your colleagues. At Yale, there was a
Speaker 1: black student who was studying in a common space and
Speaker 1: fell asleep and another student called the police. So at
Speaker 1: any point in time, a black person can be asked
Speaker 1: to basically show their papers, you know, justify, and if
Speaker 1: it goes wrong, that's their life. And you can say, well,
Speaker 1: that was a one person who might have mental issues,
Speaker 1: and black people have mental issues. You don't hear them
Speaker 1: asking people to prove that they live in their house
Speaker 1: or to prove that they are entering their own cards.
Speaker 1: Can we speak of your own livelihood for a second.
Speaker 1: You were diagnosed with breast cancer five or six years ago, right,
Speaker 1: that's correct. How did that sudden reminder of your mortality
Speaker 1: and form your day to day? You begin to value
Speaker 1: life in a new way. It made me more alive
Speaker 1: to the world, more responsible to it, more willing to
Speaker 1: say what I would want, what I would like to
Speaker 1: happen in this world, because at one, I feel like
Speaker 1: I might not have another chance. Two we're actually in
Speaker 1: extremely dire times. So I think that both things together
Speaker 1: really was the engine under just us under this book.
Speaker 1: Do you think prior to that diagnosis you were at
Speaker 1: times reluctant to say what you wanted to say. I
Speaker 1: think working on Citizen helped me think about what I valued,
Speaker 1: where I was allowing things to continue that I didn't
Speaker 1: think should continue people. I was trying to use the
Speaker 1: writing to identify certain dynamics that not just me, but
Speaker 1: black people in general were encountering over and over again.
Speaker 1: I am, by nature not a public speed. You're not
Speaker 1: a person who is an extrovert, so to be out
Speaker 1: in the open does feel unnatural to me. But sometimes
Speaker 1: you just got to do it. Sometimes you got to
Speaker 1: get on a podcast. Your domestic life is part of
Speaker 1: this book, and as someone who comes from several divorces
Speaker 1: within my family, it seemed that you were transparent about
Speaker 1: the issues you and your partner we're facing, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, may still be contemplating how was that, you know?
Speaker 1: I think the cancer diagnosis in my life and perhaps
Speaker 1: in other people's life, kind of functions like a midlife
Speaker 1: crisis where you kind of want things to change because
Speaker 1: you've suddenly run out of time. So the desire to
Speaker 1: leave my marriage, which had no real destination beyond the desire,
Speaker 1: I feel like there was somebody else out there or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It was just a kind of change
Speaker 1: that I wanted at the time, and we as a
Speaker 1: family would have moved through that, and we did move
Speaker 1: through it. This is now five years later, but I
Speaker 1: included it in the book because my husband and I
Speaker 1: were in therapy. I was surprised that of all the
Speaker 1: things that got said that the thing he thought was
Speaker 1: the worst thing. I said, as a white man, he
Speaker 1: could remarry quickly. He shouldn't be too worried about this.
Speaker 1: And it's always surprising to me how wounded white people
Speaker 1: are when they're called white. And obviously the situation my
Speaker 1: husband is complicated and more layered than just that, But
Speaker 1: that he would name that as the greatest infraction when
Speaker 1: I could have thought of like five others. I found
Speaker 1: that really interesting, And that's so that's why that ended
Speaker 1: up in Just Us, because that idea that whiteness and
Speaker 1: white supremacy are intricately tied is known to all white people,
Speaker 1: which is why they don't like the use of the
Speaker 1: word white. You said that together you two had to
Speaker 1: move through this moment. What did you have to move through.
Speaker 1: I think it was a moment where my life was
Speaker 1: broken open and it became an opportunity to restructure it
Speaker 1: and rebuild it in ways that felt healthier and more
Speaker 1: sustaining in the long term. Because you're writing about can
Speaker 1: this relationship between yourself and your husband, a white man
Speaker 1: who's been part of your work, an integral part of
Speaker 1: your work predominantly focused on race, can we laugh? Can
Speaker 1: we experience joy independent of the very real and serious
Speaker 1: work that seems to encompass every inch of our lives.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, can you can you laugh?
Speaker 1: Can you find joy? Have you? I mean yes, I
Speaker 1: think in a sense we have a child. That child
Speaker 1: has brought us a lot of joy. But I have
Speaker 1: to say that there is a way in which it's
Speaker 1: a difficult proposition. The joy, so often, or the laughter
Speaker 1: or so often is around atrocities or around twisted moments
Speaker 1: in our lives. Like not long ago, I went to
Speaker 1: walk the dog from sample and it was early in
Speaker 1: the morning. My husband wasn't he had gone out. He
Speaker 1: had an early appointment, so he had laughed and put
Speaker 1: the alarm on, and then I laughed and I forgot
Speaker 1: to turn it off when I was leaving and we
Speaker 1: put it on. So anyway, I leave, I'm walking the dog.
Speaker 1: I come back and they're policeman at our house because
Speaker 1: the alarm has gone up, and I didn't have my phone,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't answer when the alarm company called. And
Speaker 1: so I arrived at my house. I put in the code,
Speaker 1: I entered my house, I turned the alarm off. I
Speaker 1: go back to talk to the policeman, and then my
Speaker 1: husband drives up and the policeman turns to my husband
Speaker 1: and he says, she said she lives here, even after
Speaker 1: we have just gone through this whole thing where I
Speaker 1: opened the door, I turned off the alarm. Um, I say,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I took the dog out. I have the dog.
Speaker 1: And then John walks up. He says, um, she said
Speaker 1: she lives here? Does she live here? And so a
Speaker 1: moment like that, as appalling as it is the minute
Speaker 1: they leave where you know it's funny, but it's not funny.
Speaker 1: It's funny, but it's not funny. And so we have
Speaker 1: a lot of moments like that. I don't want to laugh,
Speaker 1: but you see what I mean. It's the laughter comes
Speaker 1: out of these these really outrageous and ridiculous moments in
Speaker 1: our lives. I also sense that it sort of demands
Speaker 1: this question of can't there be something more to life?
Speaker 1: Exactly can we get beyond this? There's no beyond? Is
Speaker 1: that your answer? Yeah, there is no beyond that? I mean,
Speaker 1: I really believe that. I think there is. There are
Speaker 1: timeouts where other things are going on and you're having
Speaker 1: a good time. But what's I would maybe not unique,
Speaker 1: but what is reliable is that often those times are
Speaker 1: interrupted by moments that we route them into knowing that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is no out. There's a quote that appears twice
Speaker 1: in the book. You quote Fred Molten, who writes, the
Speaker 1: analysis of our murderer and of our murderer is so
Speaker 1: we can see we are not murdered. We survive, and
Speaker 1: then as we catch a sudden glimpse of ourselves, we shudder,
Speaker 1: for we are shattered. Nothing survives. The nothingness we share
Speaker 1: is all that's real. That's what we come out to show.
Speaker 1: That showing is or ought to be our constant study,
Speaker 1: which seems to be in line with what you just
Speaker 1: said exactly that moment being shattered or understanding the repetitions
Speaker 1: of the attempt to shatter is where the laughter comes in.
Speaker 1: That is no laughter in a way. There is very
Speaker 1: little laughter in this chapter called Peaky Torches. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to present this to you. How would you describe
Speaker 1: this section of the book to people who haven't read
Speaker 1: it yet. This is a chapter that has to do
Speaker 1: with having a longstanding friendship with somebody and sharing a
Speaker 1: history with them, but then having that moment when you
Speaker 1: realize that your understanding of that history and their understanding
Speaker 1: of that history comes from different points of view. And
Speaker 1: was a college friend when we were in college together.
Speaker 1: The semester before we arrived, there was a cross burning.
Speaker 1: When I got there, I was told about it, and
Speaker 1: he apparently had no idea that happened. And when I
Speaker 1: brought it up, there was a real confusion, so alive
Speaker 1: in my mind, and yet he managed to go four
Speaker 1: years without having any knowledge of it. So that's the
Speaker 1: beginning of the investigation inside our conversation. The beginning happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, in the fall before you start
Speaker 1: at Williams College. And you have another friend who does
Speaker 1: remember the incident, and I actually think it's her response.
Speaker 1: Someone who does remember that is more curious. I didn't
Speaker 1: remember that she was the one who reported the incident.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I knew that, but she
Speaker 1: might have been the person who told me about it.
Speaker 1: When she writes to me about it, she says, I
Speaker 1: wonder if the guys, the students who were involved in
Speaker 1: it look back and are ashamed of what they did.
Speaker 1: And I thought, Wow, we are in the country. We're
Speaker 1: sixty two percent of white men voted for a president
Speaker 1: who says I'm a nationalist. Use that word. You think
Speaker 1: that those men looked back with regret on that. That's surprising,
Speaker 1: And so that was a moment that surprised me. Yes,
Speaker 1: Emily Dickinson says, are not all facts dreams as soon
Speaker 1: as we put them behind us. That quote has been
Speaker 1: circling in my head like a refrain as I've tried
Speaker 1: to understand the moment we're in. How facts can so
Speaker 1: quickly dissipate, And I think dissipate for white people. Let's
Speaker 1: say that because I think for black people, the history
Speaker 1: remains present, because it's repeating itself in slightly different ways,
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. We don't have the
Speaker 1: benefit of walking away. It's constantly. The devastation is constantly
Speaker 1: being put in front of us, so that facts's dreams
Speaker 1: is not something we can partake it. If anything, the
Speaker 1: dreams are deferred, as Lyston News told us, Do you
Speaker 1: think white people are not deferring those dreams right now?
Speaker 1: I'm thinking what's always suspicious to me is when we
Speaker 1: see whiteness acting, how much of whiteness is it? So
Speaker 1: when we see the Portland moms coming out in supportive
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter, for example, what percentage of whiteness is
Speaker 1: that really? When we see the Woman's march after the inauguration,
Speaker 1: how what percentage is that really? And how consistent will
Speaker 1: that response be going forward? And I have these moments
Speaker 1: where I have these glimmers of hope that maybe actually
Speaker 1: white people are starting to grapple with the reality that's
Speaker 1: in front of them and not deferring or forgetting, just
Speaker 1: looking at it as the present reality and understanding that
Speaker 1: it's not going to go away, and that they have
Speaker 1: to get involved and they have to do something about it.
Speaker 1: We'll only really know if that's a sustainable position going forward. Certainly,
Speaker 1: in the last five months, I have seen things that
Speaker 1: have given me hope and pause, like what the cross
Speaker 1: racial protest, the suburban moms hashtag suburban moms, as women
Speaker 1: who have been coming out supporting black lives matter, the
Speaker 1: women who put themselves between the black people and the police.
Speaker 1: All of those things are active, physical. It's not in
Speaker 1: your house. It's you actually went out in a time
Speaker 1: when COVID was a real threat to your health and said,
Speaker 1: this is as important to me as my own being.
Speaker 1: You wrote, awareness has to happen in rooms where everyone's white,
Speaker 1: since those rooms are already in place. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we have to. You know, when my mother said don't
Speaker 1: trust white people, I think that's what she met. She
Speaker 1: meant that once you walked out of that room, you
Speaker 1: had no real trust that your interest was being held
Speaker 1: by anybody in that room. So is it possible for
Speaker 1: white people to be anti racist, to want equity beyond
Speaker 1: the self? Is that something that can occur? You know,
Speaker 1: we've seen corporations for the first time saying that they're
Speaker 1: invested in creating equity corporate America. We've seen universities, We've
Speaker 1: seen people individuals suddenly stepping up and calling for justice,
Speaker 1: modes of equity, all kinds of things that we've not
Speaker 1: heard before from people we've not heard it from before,
Speaker 1: So will they carry it through, which would mean sharing resources.
Speaker 1: We'll see, hopefully in two years I can say, and
Speaker 1: it was carried through. I think the only way it
Speaker 1: can get carried through. First, we need to eliminate any
Speaker 1: line of thinking that starts with I'm not racist. I
Speaker 1: think we got to start there, because if we cannot
Speaker 1: get past that, if we cannot admit that we are,
Speaker 1: I have a hard time believing will make progress exactly.
Speaker 1: But for the first time I feel like I'm able
Speaker 1: to have discussions with white people were you don't even
Speaker 1: have to discuss that. I think where we have to
Speaker 1: go also speaks to the chapter on the Social Contract
Speaker 1: that you write about. You are at a dinner. President
Speaker 1: Trump is brought up. Someone at this dinner is writing
Speaker 1: a book on him. The subject of race is apparently
Speaker 1: not in the log line of this book. You, in turn,
Speaker 1: contest this omission. After some cordial back and forth, a
Speaker 1: tray of brownies some dessert is presented, and a woman
Speaker 1: at the head of the table says, how beautiful homemade
Speaker 1: brownies on a silver tray. What happens next when she
Speaker 1: says that, I turned to her and say am I
Speaker 1: Being silenced on a certain level effectively ends the party,
Speaker 1: because to break the social contract that you're not going
Speaker 1: to call out these moments where a person is being
Speaker 1: told that's enough of that, that's enough of your race talk.
Speaker 1: To call it out means that you are now the
Speaker 1: problem who let her in here? You know? And then
Speaker 1: the woman turns red and is looking at our hands,
Speaker 1: and everybody's staring at you, like, look what you did?
Speaker 1: You made her unhappy? What is the social contract to
Speaker 1: you in that moment. It's a kind of civility that
Speaker 1: allows white people to live with the untruths around their
Speaker 1: own collusion with right supremacy, anti black racism, among other things.
Speaker 1: We could extend that to the detention camps for undocumented children,
Speaker 1: We could extend it in a lot of different directions.
Speaker 1: But the sort of deep seated racism in this country
Speaker 1: is causing black people to lose their lives, and white
Speaker 1: people seem to be okay with that. So the contract
Speaker 1: is that you don't bring that up. You don't disturb
Speaker 1: their lives with the loss of your life. Claudiet as
Speaker 1: a person in that room, sitting around a dining table
Speaker 1: where a cordial conversation is being had, even if it
Speaker 1: gets to the topic of race, it doesn't go past
Speaker 1: a certain temperature, certain velocity. How did you find the
Speaker 1: fortitude or courage to risk those friendships in that moment.
Speaker 1: It's not courage, It was really passion. This is important
Speaker 1: to me. And these were not people I knew. Well,
Speaker 1: oh perfect, so you buried the lead. They seem like
Speaker 1: nice people. I'm sure they are nice people too. It's
Speaker 1: really I think an inability to stomach what's happening now
Speaker 1: and the falsity around the narratives that are being created
Speaker 1: that justify this moment. This was one of a number
Speaker 1: of white men I have seen in academic situations who
Speaker 1: keep insisting this was just economic, that his rise to
Speaker 1: power was only economic. I feel like those sixty two
Speaker 1: percent of white men who voted for him, give them
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. If he said he was
Speaker 1: running on racism, maybe that's what they voted for. Don't
Speaker 1: tell me that there was another agenda that was unspoken,
Speaker 1: but clearly the guiding light. And we have seen Charleston.
Speaker 1: Those men came lined up and said, you will not
Speaker 1: replace us. Jews will not replace us. So that's how economics.
Speaker 1: What are you thinking about? I was thinking, okay, calm down,
Speaker 1: but it definitely is. You know, it's just mind boggling
Speaker 1: to me, the the insistence on blindness in this country,
Speaker 1: around white supremacy. Why would you tell yourself to calm down? Oh?
Speaker 1: Just because I could hear my voice getting lot. It's like,
Speaker 1: wait a second. I mean you know you weren't telling me.
Speaker 1: I was just like, okay enough. And I bring that
Speaker 1: up because it's sort of a meta conversation about the
Speaker 1: conversation in this book. Your voice was raising, yes, why
Speaker 1: shouldn't it. It's not that it shouldn't or it should
Speaker 1: it's just that I know that you're not the person.
Speaker 1: It's like preaching to the choir here. So I wasn't
Speaker 1: feeling can I say this is and this is no
Speaker 1: saintly act. But I can handle a mild moment of
Speaker 1: discomfort because the thing we're doing right now it's as
Speaker 1: much for us as it is for strangers in places
Speaker 1: all across this country, in places that aren't America. So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't hold back anything that felt truthful, especially not
Speaker 1: at my expense. No, no, no, I thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I do feel like it's exasperating. When you actually
Speaker 1: put yourself in those moments, it just feels so exasperating
Speaker 1: because it's so you know, so many people have said,
Speaker 1: I'm not having these conversations, and you and your book
Speaker 1: and your conversations can go where you want to go,
Speaker 1: but I'm not having them because I'm too exhausted. And
Speaker 1: I know where that comes from. I feel it in
Speaker 1: my body, but I just don't think for me personally,
Speaker 1: I have that choice or any thing I can say
Speaker 1: and do towards writing this ship of the rack of
Speaker 1: a ship that we're on right now, to me, I
Speaker 1: feel like I can hold that exhaustion for that. When
Speaker 1: did you realize you didn't have that choice, that you
Speaker 1: had to ride the ship. Oddly, the more you know,
Speaker 1: the more you understand what's at stake. I think you know.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, a lot of people said to me,
Speaker 1: there's no difference between Clinton and Trump either. I'm not voting.
Speaker 1: I don't care. They're the same person. And I kept saying, no,
Speaker 1: for you, they're the same person because you're white. For me,
Speaker 1: it could be the end of my life. It could
Speaker 1: be sanctioning police the killings, It could be detention camps.
Speaker 1: It could be, and now it turns out it's really
Speaker 1: a disregard for the entire country and for the entire
Speaker 1: democratic process. But that way in which white people were like,
Speaker 1: they're no different, I'm like, yes, there is a difference.
Speaker 1: Listen to him, hear what he's saying. No, that this
Speaker 1: will break us. And now people are like, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a difference, but they had to wait to experience it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why did you have to wait until things
Speaker 1: were broken to see? I think part of the reason
Speaker 1: there was a lack of acknowledgment or willingness to see
Speaker 1: the difference between Hillary Clinton and now President Trump is
Speaker 1: that there was a lack of energy to change into
Speaker 1: the conditions, which I think are described quite beautifully in
Speaker 1: James Baldwin's The White Man's Guilt, which appears on page
Speaker 1: sixty eight if you'd like to read it for listeners.
Speaker 1: James Baldwin, The White Man's Guilt. I have often wondered,
Speaker 1: and it is not a pleasant wonder just what white
Speaker 1: Americans talk about with one another. I wonder this because
Speaker 1: they do, not, after all, seem to find very much
Speaker 1: to say to me. And I concluded long ago that
Speaker 1: they found the color of my skin inhibitory. This color
Speaker 1: seems to operate as a most disagreeable mirror, and a
Speaker 1: great deal of one's energy is expended in reassuring white
Speaker 1: Americans that they do not see what they say see.
Speaker 1: This is utterly futile, of course, since they do see
Speaker 1: what they see, and what they see is an appallingly
Speaker 1: oppressive and bloody history known all over the world. What
Speaker 1: they see is a disastrous, continuing present condition which menaces
Speaker 1: them and for which they bear an inescapable responsibility. But
Speaker 1: since in the main they seem to lack the energy
Speaker 1: to change this condition, they would rather not be reminded
Speaker 1: of it. Does this mean that in their conversations with
Speaker 1: one another they merely make reassuring sounds? It scarcely seems possible,
Speaker 1: And yet on the other hand, it seems all too likely.
Speaker 1: What does that piece mean to you? In twenty twenty, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a woman in I don't know
Speaker 1: if she was an artist, but she was talking about
Speaker 1: the removal of the statues, the Confederate statues, and she said,
Speaker 1: I don't know why white people are worried about the
Speaker 1: removement of the Confederate statues. If they want to think
Speaker 1: about that, all they need to do is look at
Speaker 1: me and my blackness, and there it is for them.
Speaker 1: And so there's a way in which that thing that
Speaker 1: she uttered is for me. What Baldwin is talking about,
Speaker 1: the disconnect is really a refusal to hold the history fully.
Speaker 1: There was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, a white man,
Speaker 1: who recently said that they shouldn't take down Montazello because
Speaker 1: Montazello was the perfect reminder of everything. It was the
Speaker 1: slave quarters that sustained the grand House, and it was
Speaker 1: all built in one and you couldn't have one without
Speaker 1: the other. And I thought that was a really astute
Speaker 1: comment that when the thing brings all the history with it,
Speaker 1: then that's the most honest moment that you can get.
Speaker 1: And white people have been able to move forward and
Speaker 1: forget segregate themselves from half the history. And that's why
Speaker 1: they don't like neighborhoods being shared with black people, because
Speaker 1: it brings that other part of the history into their
Speaker 1: day to day lives. You bring up the history of
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, I want to quote it, he wrote, But
Speaker 1: never yet could I find that a black had uttered
Speaker 1: a thought above the level of plain narration, never see
Speaker 1: even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music,
Speaker 1: more generally gifted than the whites, with accurate ears for
Speaker 1: tune and time. Misery is often the parent of the
Speaker 1: most affecting touches and poetry. Among the Blacks, misery is
Speaker 1: enough God knows, but no poetry. It could not produce
Speaker 1: a poet. You talk about holding history in the palms
Speaker 1: of our hands, and I couldn't help but read that
Speaker 1: last line. Among the blacks, misery is enough God knows,
Speaker 1: but no poetry. It couldnt produce a poet. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I wanted that in there was because it
Speaker 1: was a moment to have that conversation with him. There
Speaker 1: are many white men now who will say Claudie Rankin
Speaker 1: is not a poet. She has not written a single poem.
Speaker 1: There was a student on Twitter the other day who
Speaker 1: said her professor said that I had never written a poem.
Speaker 1: So his position is not history, it is present, it's
Speaker 1: present day. It's right. But I think that moment for
Speaker 1: me was a moment of that kind of laughter that
Speaker 1: I referred to earlier with my husband, that the funny
Speaker 1: not funny it's funny, and then it becomes tragic the
Speaker 1: way it continues. The poets. It's not that I am
Speaker 1: in need of their recognition, God knows no. But I
Speaker 1: feel bad that students have to be tweeting things like
Speaker 1: my white professor said, Claudia Rankin is not a poet.
Speaker 1: They have to feel like they have to stand up
Speaker 1: for me in the face of that, even today, even
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, And forget about me, Like, if they're saying
Speaker 1: that about my work, what are they saying about other
Speaker 1: black people's work. How are they qualified to be teaching
Speaker 1: that person in the first place. And so that kind
Speaker 1: of thing becomes bitter sweet when I feel the moment
Speaker 1: building in all the ways and all the conversations that
Speaker 1: I know exists around a moment like that. It's been
Speaker 1: building for you for three decades of writing, and I
Speaker 1: can't help but shake what a white woman who came
Speaker 1: up to you at a book reading said to you.
Speaker 1: She said, I've been doing anti racist work since the eighties.
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you it makes no difference. You know,
Speaker 1: when she said that, we both just started laughing. Well,
Speaker 1: I started laughing and then she started laughing. That sends
Speaker 1: of you're just pushing a rock up a hill, lady.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting to me and what I appreciate in
Speaker 1: the work of people like Ibram Kendy or Robin DeAngelo
Speaker 1: is not so much that they will convince people to
Speaker 1: behave differently, is that they are naming dynamics that are
Speaker 1: that we recognize. I feel like I have the ability
Speaker 1: to describe these dynamics, but they have the ability to
Speaker 1: name them, so that suddenly we are now at a
Speaker 1: point in the culture where we have language for certain dynamics,
Speaker 1: either white fragility or white defensiveness. Whereas before you were
Speaker 1: like and then he said this, and then I said this,
Speaker 1: and that da da da da dad, and now you
Speaker 1: can say white defensive. So I feel like, in that sense,
Speaker 1: she's wrong that the work has allowed for the seeing
Speaker 1: of things. Maybe it hasn't changed the way white people behave,
Speaker 1: but it's allowed people like me to know what to
Speaker 1: call it. Do you feel like your work has made
Speaker 1: a difference. I don't know. I know that my work
Speaker 1: has been supported and meant by people, and I hope
Speaker 1: that it's useful to them. And I know that for me,
Speaker 1: I value the books that I value and they helped
Speaker 1: me think about things in the world. So it's a
Speaker 1: real honor that other people hold my work in this
Speaker 1: in a similar way. How about you, Claudia, to write
Speaker 1: what you write, has it helped you operate through the world.
Speaker 1: What's exciting to me about creating books is how the
Speaker 1: structure of the book helps the content of the book breathe.
Speaker 1: And to me, it's not just a question of writing
Speaker 1: a book. I really need for the way in which
Speaker 1: the book is structured to somehow communicate the content. So
Speaker 1: in just us, I feel like the task before me
Speaker 1: was how, in the age of fake news and no science,
Speaker 1: can I make a book that brings the facts back
Speaker 1: even as we're talking across the table from each other
Speaker 1: in quotitian ways, but with the carefulness of the archives
Speaker 1: and research, and also with the randomness of associated thinking.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I wanted the book to have
Speaker 1: the verso recto pages communing with each other. And when
Speaker 1: I figured that out, that was an exciting moment for
Speaker 1: me as a writer. So it's not as if I
Speaker 1: the books live out beyond me. It's the time when
Speaker 1: I'm making them that I feel the most alive. That
Speaker 1: it's like I'm doing calculus, like I'm really I have
Speaker 1: these math pros that I'm trying to figure them out,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly I figure out, Okay, this will go here,
Speaker 1: and this will go here, and this will be in conversation.
Speaker 1: And the friend Mountain quote, It's going to happen twice
Speaker 1: because I really think it's the most important quote in
Speaker 1: the book. And you know, like things like that, and that,
Speaker 1: to me is why I write, Why I make things.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you make things. And in leaving this conversation,
Speaker 1: I want to go to your final chapter. In it,
Speaker 1: there are some urgent words that I think people really
Speaker 1: need to be thinking about right now. You write, in
Speaker 1: most cases we have already decided about everything and everyone,
Speaker 1: but real thinking, the effect, theorist Lorne Burland writes, interrupts
Speaker 1: the flow of consciousness with a new demand for scanning
Speaker 1: and focus to be forced into thought is to begin
Speaker 1: to formulate the event of feeling historical in the present.
Speaker 1: What does that mean to you? Feeling historical in the present.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a great fan of Lorn Blonde's work,
Speaker 1: and in fact, her book Cruel Optimism is right on
Speaker 1: my desk right here, and that sense that you allow
Speaker 1: yourself to stand right now out in this moment, with
Speaker 1: the history of the moment and the ways in which
Speaker 1: it shapes you and shapes what I'm saying to you
Speaker 1: and what you're saying to me, and what's happening in
Speaker 1: the world. That's not scary for us. That we can
Speaker 1: live with it, We can take an into account. In
Speaker 1: some ways, it can determine what our next step should be,
Speaker 1: i e. Voting in the twenty twenty election, you know,
Speaker 1: So that the end, I really wanted the closing of
Speaker 1: the book to engage what it means to feel yourself
Speaker 1: as part of a public, part of not that there
Speaker 1: is a single public, but that we have a sense
Speaker 1: of connection with each other, and that we believe that
Speaker 1: your livelihood and my livelihood, and her livelihood and his
Speaker 1: are all important, and that they're reason which we can
Speaker 1: get each of us to live without feeling precarious from
Speaker 1: moment to moment. Since you do have the book in
Speaker 1: front of you, would you mind reading from the bottom
Speaker 1: of three thirty three and three thirty five not at all?
Speaker 1: As a naturalized citizen, I am as connected to the
Speaker 1: ones who say go back to where you come from
Speaker 1: or send her back. As I am to the democratic
Speaker 1: process that names me an American citizen, and as unknowable
Speaker 1: as I am to anyone else, I forever remain in
Speaker 1: relation to everyone else. I am not a part of
Speaker 1: the one, but I am one. There is no beyond
Speaker 1: of citizenship. A stranger tells me he thought the goal
Speaker 1: was understanding himself as different from but then he came
Speaker 1: to understand his sameness. He came to understand himself to
Speaker 1: be living also among other humans who are not white,
Speaker 1: living within a structure set up to disenfranchise those others.
Speaker 1: Author Jaffa said, as a black person, you know whiteness
Speaker 1: and experience it. How do you contain that and white
Speaker 1: people who you know and love. I might extend this
Speaker 1: to all persons who you know and love, each one
Speaker 1: one at a time. Our lives could enact a love
Speaker 1: of close reading of who we each are, the love
Speaker 1: of a newly formed, newly conceived one made up of
Speaker 1: obscure but sense and unnamed publics in an yet unimagined future.
Speaker 1: What I know is that an incoheate desire for a
Speaker 1: future other than the one that seems to be forming
Speaker 1: our days brings me to a seat around any table,
Speaker 1: to lean forward, to hear, to respond to, await response
Speaker 1: from any other. Tell me something one thing, the thing,
Speaker 1: tell me that thing. Thank you so much. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I waited all these years to talk to you. It's
Speaker 1: been a pleasure. Four years ago I asked you to
Speaker 1: come on, and in the aftermath of reading your new book,
Speaker 1: my understanding of the world around me changed, shattered in
Speaker 1: the same ways they shattered after reading something like The
Speaker 1: Fire Next Time by James Baldwin or The Brown Bag
Speaker 1: of Miscellany by Sorneil Hurston. And so it's okay that
Speaker 1: you took four years. You could have taken forty. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was Claudia ranking. Thank you very very much. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. That's our show special thanks this week
Speaker 1: to Elizabeth Shreeve, Emily Skillings, and my dear friend Metamari
Speaker 1: Kong's fed. Claudia's latest book, Just Us an American Conversation,
Speaker 1: is available wherever you do your reading. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to learn more about Claudia, you can visit our show
Speaker 1: notes at www dot talk easypod dot com. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to hear more talks with writers, journalists, authors and poets,
Speaker 1: I'd recommend some conversations we've had with people like Elizabeth Gilbert,
Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky, Morgan Parker, Malcolm Gladwell, fran Liebowitz, Wesley Morris,
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinham, and many many more. You can find all
Speaker 1: of those on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google podcast, Stitcher, wherever
Speaker 1: you do your listening. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at talk easypod, and if you'd like to
Speaker 1: join our mailing list, drop me a line at Sam
Speaker 1: at talk easypod dot com. You can also email our
Speaker 1: show at talk easypod at gmail dot com. This podcast
Speaker 1: is made possible by our incredible team. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jennick Sobravo. Illustrations by Christia Schnoy, Associate producer Nicki Spina.
Speaker 1: Our lead editor is Andre Lynn. Our assistant editors are
Speaker 1: David Harding and Rina Young. Our music is by Dylan Peck,
Speaker 1: marketing by Patrice Lee, Our interns are Juliette, Director Grace
Speaker 1: Perkins and Ian Simmons. Graphics by Derek Gaberzak and Ethan Seneca,
Speaker 1: and the show is produced by Caroline Raebuck. I'm San Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy I'll see you
Speaker 1: next week with Representative ill han Omar. Until that, stay
Speaker 1: safe and so long. Poto of two moves from both
Speaker 1: of us, both by Free two photos