Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Citizen: An American Lyric, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bigotry, Implicit Bias, and Legitimacy
Identity and Sense of Self
Anger and Emotional Processing
History and Erasure
Summary
Analysis
The protagonist is late while meeting a friend one day. When the protagonist finally arrives and approaches, her friend says, “You are late, you nappy-headed ho.” The protagonist hears this perfectly but can’t help but ask, “What did you say?” They have never spoken this way together, and the friend is unable to repeat herself. The protagonist then wonders if her friend was trying to “code-switch” as a way of embodying a stereotypical notion of the way black people talk to each other. Or, she thinks, perhaps her friend wants to talk about the radio announcer who referred several years earlier to members of a certain women’s basketball team as “nappy headed hoes,” though this seems unlikely. On the whole, she has no idea why her friend has spoken this way. This exchange makes both women deeply uncomfortable, and they find themselves incapable of overcoming the moment.
It isn’t exactly clear whether or not the protagonist’s friend is a black woman, though the thought that she was trying to “code-switch” suggests that she might be, since code-switching is generally something people do with one another if they both belong to a certain community or cultural background. Regardless, though, what the protagonist’s friend says disturbs her because it calls upon racist language, forcing her once again to face racism in her everyday life. This, of course, is not something she wants to do, especially when she’s simply trying to have a nice time with her friend. In this way, readers see just how inescapable racism can seem, since it apparently comes at the protagonist from all angles, including from her friends.
Themes
The protagonist continues to encounter racism and ignorance. A coworker calls her by the name of another black colleague, later apologizing in an email by saying she’s sorry about “our mistake.” In another instance, the protagonist speaks with a man on the phone and then, when she sees him in person, he blurts out that he didn’t know she was black. Instantly, he says he didn’t mean to say this, but she can tell he means that he didn’t intend to say it out loud. On another occasion, a highly educated woman tells the protagonist that she didn’t know black women could get cancer. In yet another conversation, a friend tells the protagonist that he saw a picture of her online, adding that she looks angry because she isn’t smiling. In turn, the protagonist realizes that the picture makes him uncomfortable and that he wants her to “account for that.”
Again, the protagonist cannot escape racism in her daily life. This is emotionally exhausting, since she constantly has to consider the fact that society at large has deeply problematic biases against black people. What’s worse, though, is that many of her white acquaintances want her to “account” for their own discomfort when it comes to her cultural positioning, hoping that she will be able to relieve them of whatever qualms they have about either her race, their relationship with her, or perhaps the country’s terrible history of racism. Indeed, this is possibly why white people frequently speak to her as if they can transcend racism, since they hope she—as a black person—will allow them to stop thinking about such matters. In doing so, they only give themselves permission to say racist things. And all the while, they leave it to the protagonist to do the emotional heavy lifting that comes along with such conversations, expecting her to process their problematic comments and move on without a problem.
Themes
While attending a reading at the university where she teaches one day, the protagonist listens to a visiting humorist answer questions. When one of the audience members asks what makes something funny, the humorist explains that comedy is all about context. This doesn’t surprise the protagonist, but what he says next does, since he goes on to say that most people would laugh with their friends in private at certain jokes that they might not laugh at “out in public where black people could hear.” Considering this, the protagonist realizes that the humorist groups her into the “others out in public” category of this equation. According to this logic, then, she is not among “friends” even at her own university.
The humorist addresses the audience as if everyone there is white, speaking in a way that implies a white perspective. Consequently, the protagonist realizes that he hasn’t even bothered to account for the fact that he has excluded her (and any other people of color who might be in the audience) from his considerations. Furthermore, the humorist apparently has no qualms admitting that he finds racist jokes funny. This attitude suggests that he thinks he can transcend racism entirely, perhaps thinking it’s no longer problematic to laugh at racist jokes because racism is a thing of the past. And yet, racism isn’t a thing of the past—it is very much still alive in contemporary times, in large part because of attitudes like his.
Themes
The protagonist attends a lecture by the philosopher and public intellectual Judith Butler. When a person in the audience asks Butler why language is capable of hurting people, she answers by saying that the simple act of existing makes people “addressable.” People, she argues, are only as emotionally vulnerable as they are “addressable”—the more “addressable” they are, the more susceptible they are to being hurt by others through language. Thinking about this, the protagonist realizes that, although she has always thought racist language effectively attempts to “erase” black people, the truth is that being black in predominantly white contexts renders one “hypervisible.” This, in turn, makes people of color especially “addressable.”
The idea that black people are “hypervisible” in predominantly white contexts aligns with Zora Neale Hurston’s assertion that she feels “most colored” when “thrown against a sharp white background.” In keeping with this, the protagonist shifts how she thinks of her own cultural positioning, coming to see her own existence in majority-white spaces not as one of invisibility, but one of “hypervisib[ility]”—a notion that accords with the fact that she is constantly encountering racism as she moves through her daily life.
Themes
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A friend of the protagonist tells her one day that she should learn how to keep the racism of the outside world from affecting her so thoroughly. This friend explains that she often finds herself calling people out for saying something ignorant, hurtful, or problematic, ultimately signaling to them that she’s unwilling to accept such behavior. Reflecting upon her own coping mechanisms, the protagonist thinks about how she often internalizes hurtful and toxic encounters. Rather than keeping herself from commenting on this, she acknowledges that she should strive do more than simply “get[] along” with people, though she still doesn’t always challenge this kind of racism.
The protagonist’s hesitancy to call people out for being racist indicates that such things are often easier said than done. What’s more, she is all too aware of the unfortunate fact that taking a stand against injustice sometimes only invites even more mistreatment, which is what happened to Serena Williams at the 2009 U.S. Open. With this in mind, then, she continues to respond passively to racism and bigotry, though she acknowledges that this isn’t a productive way of coping with mistreatment either.
Themes
