I don't think people want to look at problems. They want a continuous narrative, an optimistic narrative. A narrative that says there's a present and a future - and what was in the past no longer exists. Claudia Rankine More Quotes by Claudia Rankine More Quotes From Claudia Rankine Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships. Claudia Rankine car crazy law When you achieve it fully, you create something that's transparent - that people can move into and through their own experiences. As a writer, I don't want people spending time thinking, "What does she mean?" I want, in a way, my text to go away. So that the words on the page become a door to one's own internal investigation. It's just a passage. If the work does its job, it just opens. Claudia Rankine jobs mean moving Yes, and the body has a memory. The physical carriage hauls more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness—all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience does not erase the moments lived through, even as we are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to be inside, among, a part of the games. Claudia Rankine optimistic stupid memories In the future, we've forgotten it. It's disappointing to find out that the past is the present is the future. Nobody wants that. And yet, that's what it is. Maybe it's a kind of surrealist move, to use language like "post-racial" - thinking that if you create the language for it, it will happen. I wish it worked that way. But that's not our reality. Claudia Rankine reality moving thinking I don't know about forgiving, but it's an "I'm still here." And it's not just because I have nowhere else to go. It's because I believe in the possibility. I believe in the possibility of another way of being. Let's make other kinds of mistakes; let's be flawed differently. Claudia Rankine forgiving mistake believe Each of these failures for me is a failure of communication, via a mode of communication that can be violent or meant to behave violently. Butler provides a way of thinking about how language becomes an instrument of violence. And why we feel it as such. Claudia Rankine communication violence thinking I am invested in keeping present the forgotten bodies. Claudia Rankine body forgotten If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America. Claudia Rankine racism country america I'm not comfortable, for myself and for others. And yet, one has these people whom you trust, have faith in, whom you believe see what you see, and then you come up against a moment where you feel suddenly tossed out. So I was really interested in those moments. Claudia Rankine have-faith believe people I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating. Claudia Rankine black body thinking One of the things that I think about is: How do you make moments that float, transparent? Moments that could just float away. How do you make a body accountable for its language, its positioning? Why not make a body accountable for its language? Claudia Rankine why-not body thinking People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things. Claudia Rankine animal people thinking I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know. Claudia Rankine mirrors writing thinking I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something. Claudia Rankine three two way For me her image, the triptych, became a study of the weight the black male figure carries, given the fact that they are targeted by the police, and are constantly in danger of being misread in public spaces. Claudia Rankine police black space For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under." Claudia Rankine guy men thinking Poetry is probably the last gift economy. Part of the negotiation is to understand that you're going to do something you really want to do, so you're going to take whatever life comes with that. Claudia Rankine economy lasts want I don't really agree with the role model thing. People are always saying that athletes shouldn't do X or Y because they are role models. Claudia Rankine role-models athlete people I think having a term for a condition that is prevalent is useful, because then people understand it as something not particular to them. It allows you not to ask the question, "What's wrong with me?" and begin to ask the question, "What's wrong with this place that I'm in?" Claudia Rankine term people thinking You become a role model because of what you do as a person. There's a certain point where being a role model might come from standing up for yourself and getting rid of emotion that doesn't belong to you, emotion that is being brought on because of racist actions of others. Claudia Rankine racist role-models roles
