Claudia Rankine’s Citizen details the various ways in which racism can be felt by a black citizen of America. Examples in the book range widely, but in every instance, there is the same underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, dehumanization, and self-loathing experienced by the African American. Because the book is told in the second person, each experience feels direct, like it could be happening to you. The themes of each insulting and hateful experience are vividly expressed. From the narrator’s personal, everyday experiences, to the hurtles Serena Williams has had to overcome, or accept, to the effect of Hurricane Katrina on black neighborhoods, Rankine portrays the ignorance and hatred black citizens are faced with … and as the loneliness and despair with which they cope.

Throughout the book, an attitude of ignorance toward black citizens is apparent. On a personal level, the narrator had a friend who called her the name of her black housekeeper. “You assumed you two were the only black people in her life. Eventually she stopped doing this, but she never acknowledged her slippage.” Her friend didn’t mean to hurt her, but she clearly managed to insult her on a deep level. Despite feeling degraded, the narrator didn’t call her friend out because it was uncomfortable and embarrassing for both of them. And even though she didn’t do anything wrong, the narrator felt just as wretched as her friend. This ignorance of a friend’s name, perhaps the most basic form of personal identity, is one example of the ignorance black citizens face every day.

Dehumanization that leads to loneliness is another consistent theme throughout the book. Serena Williams, a professional tennis player, dealt publicly with racism. Although her experiences took place in a different setting than those of the narrator, she shared the same hurt and anger at being dehumanized and discriminated against. When a referee, Mariana Alves, clearly cheated her, Serena managed to maintain her composure, but expressed her feelings after the match: “I’m very angry and bitter right now. … I just feel robbed.” As Rankine puts it, “Serena’s frustrations, her disappointments, exist within a system you understand not to try to understand in any fair-minded way” because it doesn’t make sense. It is a waste of time and energy to try to comprehend the hate and discrimination you feel. “To do so is to understand the erasure of self as systematic, as ordinary.” Regularly, Serena and others experience the “erasure of self” and the feeling of isolation. These wounds build up, making people less sensitive, more protective – but no person can take so much hate.

Despair is another theme found in Rankine’s examples of racism. A sense of hopelessness is found in those who are constantly disparaged and for whom the odds are never in their favor. Hurricane Katrina hit poor black neighborhoods hard, and they struggled to recover from it. No one can control a natural disaster, but some black neighborhoods lacked the resources necessary to reconstruct themselves, while wealthier neighborhoods recovered faster and with more ease. CNN collected quotes from survivors of and around these neighborhoods who witnessed the effects of the hurricane. “You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals, so many of these people, almost all of them we see, are so poor, someone else said, and they are so black.” It is morbid and depressing to witness the death and decline of poor communities, black communities, at the hands of what others can recover from with less difficulty. The feeling of everything going against, rather than for, people of such communities has the power to drag them into despair.

Citizen details the ignorance about dehumanization and despair felt by the black citizen. It is direct and in your face. You feel what’s happening deeply and vividly. Ultimately, the book is about what it means to be a black citizen in America, and although people of all skin colors have felt hopeless, misunderstood, belittled, and lonely at times, they do not carry the burden of the black citizen.