Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine—A review

I first thought of myself as white at age 15, when, in 1970, I was assigned to a previously all black high school because of the court-ordered desegregation of the Durham (NC) Public Schools. Before that I thought of myself as a girl, a student, and a teenager. At Hillside High School, in a white minority, I was a white student, a white teenage girl. The first time I thought about what it meant to be white was many years later in a racial equity workshop. The facilitator asked us to go around in the circle and say aloud what we liked best about being white or black (as relevant). Black participants’s voices were noticeably joyful as they enthusiastically talked about favorite foods or music or community. White participants, as you can imagine, especially if you are white, sighed, squirmed in their chairs, and even teared up while trying to answer a question that made clear their privilege vis a vis black people and the sterility of whatever passed for a common culture. We were wary of the moral danger of admitting to liking something about ourselves that caused others pain. When it was my turn, I confessed that what I liked was not having to think about being white all the time. I wasn’t the first white person in the group to say this, but it didn’t take the sting away from owning up to it.  

In her book Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press, 2020), poet, playwright, scholar, and essayist, Claudia Rankine is looking for answers from white people to similar kinds of questions about racial identity. Early on, she describes a thought experiment: “I wondered what it would mean to ask random white men how they understood their privilege. I imagined myself--a middle-aged black woman--walking up to random strangers to do so.” Airports becomes the place where the author imagines these discussions with strangers. This seemed to me a sensible place to begin her book-long quest for an honest conversation with white people about their privilege. After all, race and gender are easily observable as travelers are physically separated into hierarchies of privilege based on ticket cost and travel frequency. To bring this point home, Rankine recounts her personal experience of standing at the front of the first-class line when two white men step, unapologetically, right in front of her. When Rankine asked them why they were cutting in line, they were noticeably surprised that she was actually in the first-class line, and only, maybe, a little embarrassed. 

And so, Rankine takes this fantasy with her through several actual flights as she thinks about what she would say or ask of one white man or another, deciding in each that she was not quite ready to engage. She eventually eases into conversation with some under tones of race with a man on a flight from Johannesburg who spoke up for her when the flight attendant kept forgetting her drink, but she doesn’t push any further into questions about white privilege. And then on another flight she finds herself sitting at the gate next to a man who asks her where she teaches. When she says “Yale,” he tells her his son had applied but didn’t get in early admission and also says, “It’s tough when you can’t play the diversity card.” Taken aback, she wonders if this response is “the innocence of white privilege.” She takes a deep breath and stays in the conversation, saying, “I’ve been thinking about white male privilege, and I wonder if you think about yours and your son’s?” 

He had not. Rankine challenges his perspective on this matter in a longer conversation, and he listens, though she admits exhaustion at the end of it, realizing they were having a conversation about the perceived loss of white male privilege. This is not the last conversation she recounts. She takes each a step further and learns more.

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The title of the book is a play on words, taken from a quote by black comedian Richard Pryor, “You go down there looking for justice, that’s what you’ll find, just us.” Just Us is full of well-documented and fact-checked examples of racialized injustices and atrocities, like inequities between white and black women in care they receive for breast cancer, the violent treatment of black middle school students by white resource officers, black police trainees being put on administrative leave for saying the words, “white male privilege” during a diversity workshop, and the wrongful arrests, convictions and murders of so many black people by the police.

But also throughout Just Us, Rankine entwines her personal stories with discussions of the political realities of white privilege in our country. White privilege insinuates itself into her own life, for example, as the high anxiety she feels the night she and her husband attend the parent night at her daughter’s school. They see only two black teachers there, and her daughter is in neither class they teach. Rankine writes, “What would it take for me too feel somewhat at ease? A group of white parents approaching me and my husband to express anxiety about the lack of diversity among the faculty? A group of faculty approaching us to say we know what this looks like?” She continues to describe the political realities of racism in New York schools, as a source of her anxiety, as white people gentrify poor black neighborhoods and then white parents of children in now predominantly white schools resist efforts to diversify their student population by opening up 25% of the school seats to children who qualify for free or reduced lunches. The past few years I have been especially upset by what I see in our country as a lack of concern for the common good, especially as it relates to racial equity, and these thoughts resonate with Rankine’s when she calls out white parents saying, “The inability of white people to see children other than white children as children is a reality that frankly leaves one hopeless about a change in attitudes regarding the perceived humanity of black people.”

I often found myself feeling upset or angry on Rankine’s behalf as she reports a number of cringe-worthy interactions with white people--some of them her friends or colleagues--who do not consider themselves racist, but who do not recognize their white privilege or who are defensive about it. Though I mostly believed I could never be one of “those” white people, some of her “real life” scenarios caused me to think more about it more honestly. She tells a story about going to see the play Fairview with a white friend of hers. At the end of the play, a character asks the white people in the audience to leave their seats and go up on the stage, leaving the audience to be a safe space for black people. Rankine’s friend would not leave her seat and Rankine becomes tense and feels betrayed, though at the same time she tries to think of all the ways in which her friend’s action might be ok. But she does not feel it is. “Be still, my beating, breaking heart,” she says. When she asks her friend why she didn’t go onstage, the friends says, “I didn’t want to.” 

While I was reading this essay, I kept thinking, “I can’t believe she didn’t go onstage when asked, sitting next to a black friend or not.” But then I wondered if I would have or not. I do not generally like audience participation theater, but would I have gone up onstage if called out as a white person? Would it have mattered if I had gone with a friend who was black? Especially if I felt it mattered to them? I can’t be sure what my desire not to be noticed versus the call of friendship would have led me to do.

Because of their friendship, however, they were able to continue talking about this particular situation. Rankine asks her to read the essay she writes about it. Her friend writes an extensive response about her complicated reasons for not wanting to go up onstage, including: “I think I hoped my resisting the stage could somehow be a piece of a fully successful ending: not all the white people got up--interesting.” Rankine finishes the piece with, “I am in my head and in my heart simultaneously. What I know is that I can always ask, even as I’m feeling what I don’t want to feel. I can always ask.” The gift of their friendship. What I can hope is that I am perceived as available for those generous conversations.

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Just Us represents the full range of Rankine’s talents. It is written as poetry and prose. It is beautifully designed. Explanatory and reference notes are inserted on the pages facing the text to which they correspond, the specific line referred to identified with a red dot. It is abundant with photographic images, mostly in color, that often illustrate the essays or the notes about the essays, though sometimes the connection is not clear until further on in the text. I found the hardback version a pleasure to hold while reading and turning the pages because of the binding and the weight and feel of the paper it was printed on. All of this added to the satisfaction of glimpsing Rankine’s honest search for answers about a perspective she humbly assumes she does not have, while at the same time asking us to enter into a conversation with her for the same reasons.