“ It strikes me that what the attack on the World Trade Center stole from us is our willingness to be complex. Or what the attack on the World Trade Center revealed to us is that we were never complex.… Claudia Rankine
“ I think sports is one of the places where race plays itself out publicly. Although we pretend it doesn't. Claudia Rankine
“ The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings. Claudia Rankine
“ Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word. (Ralph Ellison) Claudia Rankine
“ A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done. Claudia Rankine
“ What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s I feel most colored when I… Claudia Rankine
“ Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she ans… Claudia Rankine
“ Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condit… Claudia Rankine
“ Hey you —All our fevered history won't instill insight,won't turn a body conscious,won't make that look in the eyes say yes, though there is nothingto solve even as each moment is an answer. Claudia Rankine
“ In a taxi speeding uptown on the West Side Highway, I let my thoughts drift below the surface of the Hudson until it finally occurs to me that feelings fill the gaps created by the indirectness of exp… Claudia Rankine
“ Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that la… Claudia Rankine
“ Or one meaning of here is “in this world, in this life, on earth. In this place or position, indicating the presence of,” or in other words, I am here. It also means to hand something to somebody—Here… Claudia Rankine
