thenation--2020-10-06--Who Will Save the News?

Who Will Save the News?

The importance of accurate information has been all too apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic .
Besides charting the devastation of the virus , the World Health Organization has mapped a subsequent “ infodemic , ” a period of often dangerous and inflammatory misinformation circulating globally .
This infodemic has had deadly effects .
Donald Trump and Brazil ’ s Jair Bolsonaro have denied the scale of the pandemic and then peddled false cures , leading to hospitalizations and deaths among people who followed Trump ’ s advice to drink bleach or take hydroxychloroquine .
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yoga could increase immunity to Covid-19 .
The misinformation would be laughable if it weren ’ t so deadly .
A group of economists studying the pandemic in the United States has shown that as a result of bad information , there have been higher death rates from Covid-19 among viewers of Sean Hannity , a Fox News host who downplayed the threat .
Meanwhile , Republican opposition to mask wearing may have contributed to skyrocketing infection rates in the United States in July .
Anya Schiffrin would like to thank Chloe Oldham @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Many of the tools used to fight misinformation have proved inadequate .
Fact-checking politicians ’ statements can be haphazard , and rebuttals often arrive long after the lies have gone viral and may not reach the people exposed to them .
Attempts to build trust in the media through audience engagement have been limited in scale and remain mostly local .
Twitter and Facebook have attempted to crack down , removing damaging accounts and pointing people to trustworthy sites with reliable information , but both companies have been slow to act .
Their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on audience engagement and outrage , so it ’ s the controversial and often false information that makes them the most money .
There is no financial incentive to crack down .
Reliable information is clearly needed , but journalists find themselves in a difficult position .
Although they have been classified as essential workers , tens of thousands have been laid off or furloughed around the world .
News audiences have risen dramatically in 2020 , but sharply declining revenue in previous years—particularly from advertising—has crippled many newsrooms .
Now the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the stage for what some are calling a media extinction event .
This is true in the United States , where things are so bad that the Poynter Institute , a nonprofit journalism school and research organization , says it ’ s updating its job loss tracker almost every day .
As of this writing , the institute reports that 18 local newspapers have merged , at least 1,500 newsroom staffers have been permanently laid off , a minimum of 20 publications have suspended their print editions , and at least 30 local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalists of color are often the most likely to be laid off , as The Washington Post reported in May . )
But the crumbling of news organizations is not confined to the United States ; it is happening all over the world .
As the Botswanan journalist Ntibinyane Ntibinyane warned in April , many African newspapers might not survive the pandemic , and the same is true in countries as diverse as Bolivia , Brazil , India , Liberia , the Philippines , and the United Kingdom .
The desperate situation that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all face with it as a result—is the focus of Victor Pickard ’ s new book , Democracy Without Journalism ?
Confronting the Misinformation Society .
Written before the pandemic hit , the book is all the more relevant in a world transformed by Covid-19 .
Among other things , it offers a critical examination of US media history , arguing that at crucial moments , a market-centered understanding of the media has undermined the public good that news outlets provide .
Yet the book also offers us an important reminder that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong by creating what Pickard calls “ a permanent public news media shielded from the market.
” The “ current crisis , ” he says , “ offers opportunities for reasserting the public service mission of the press.
” Democracy Without Journalism ?
is the story of how the United States missed so many opportunities in the past .
Pickard begins with the early years of the United States and the tension between American democracy and classical liberalism .
For him , the prevailing assumption that laissez-faire politics and “ capitalist competition ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has had disastrous consequences .
Far from creating a liberal marketplace of ideas , it has resulted instead in a system dominated by powerful elites who have limited the range of political points of view , narrowed the field of reporting , and starved local news of funds .
In the Shadow of the CMS For Pickard , the abiding faith in the market has not just impeded the flourishing of a truly free and diverse press ; it has also hindered our ability to institute policies that might correct this situation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ monopoly control to illustrate how US policy at key points in history led to the news media ’ s precarious state today , and he highlights those moments when the United States might have pursued a more democratic path for journalism .
One important example for Pickard is the debate over the role of the press that took place during and after World War II .
As Sam Lebovic observes in Free Speech and Unfree News , freedom of the press was viewed as “ an obvious antidote to dictatorship ” in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then in the dawning years of the Cold War .
Media concentration was likewise seen as a potential danger , spawning a vigorous debate over how to regulate the news industry .
To study this threat , the Commission on Freedom of the Press was established in late 1943 .
Known as the Hutchins Commission ( after its chair , University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins ) , it held numerous meetings and eventually published a report .
But within the commission , analysts were divided .
Media reformers wanted to break up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom from corporate control was an important part of press freedom , but they lost out to those who viewed freedom from government interference as the best way to preserve the marketplace of ideas .
The commission ’ s “ corporate libertarian ” views , as Pickard puts it , prevailed , as they did more generally in debates over government support for the media .
The Federal Communications Commission , which was established in 1934 , hewed to the position that it should play a limited role in regulating the press .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporting in the public interest , the FCC left those who wanted to protect journalism fighting with one hand tied behind their back .
Pickard notes that this did not have to be the case .
From the nation ’ s earliest years , the federal government supported the news media in indirect ways .
Drawing on the work of Richard John , who examined how the founders viewed the post office as central to the nation ’ s information infrastructure , Pickard argues not only that the Hutchins Commission was a missed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a considerable misunderstanding of the government ’ s role in the past .
Newspapers and magazines , he writes , have long enjoyed various government subsidies , including most obviously from the Postal Service , where over time they accounted for the majority ( by weight ) of what the post office shipped and delivered .
In fact , if one added up all the discounted postal rates that newspapers and magazines have received since the 18th century , the sum would amount to several billion dollars .
Thus government subsidies were an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its earliest days .
The embrace of a corporate libertarian position did not hew to past practices ; instead the refusal to invest in the press only marked an abdication on the part of the federal government—one that created an opening for further monopoly control .
Without government funding or regulation , newspapers and broadcasting companies became dependent on advertisers and wealthy owners , setting the stage for the fiercely partisan reporting we see today from the Sinclair Broadcast Group , Fox News , and even more extreme outlets .
The American fidelity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a result of free-market ideology , newspapers and magazines are seen not as a public good but instead as commodities to be sold for profit by private companies outside the control of public institutions .
In Democracy Without Journalism ?
Pickard outlines a series of proposals to create a more robust news media in the United States and thus a more democratic society .
He calls for the creation of a fund that would support local journalism , especially in the country ’ s growing number of news deserts , and for stronger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prevent further consolidation in the industry .
All of these policies are perfectly reasonable and , as Pickard shows in the book ’ s sections on other countries , are currently enjoyed by many other parts of the world .
But he also recognizes that the notion of a government-funded media system remains anathema to many in the United States—especially ( but not only ) to Republicans , who have long opposed an expansive role for the FCC and government regulation of huge media companies .
In his book ’ s last chapters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ battles between Republicans and Democrats over the role of the FCC , as well as the prospect of more public subsidies for newspapers , radio , and television .
Instead of effective corporate regulation , the Fairness Doctrine—the 1949 replacement for the Mayflower Doctrine , which constrained broadcasters from editorializing—had long served as a consolation prize for media reformers .
It required broadcasters to cover socially important issues and to fairly present opposing sides .
But even that proved too much for Republicans , who repeatedly framed the policy as an attack on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revoked by Congress in 1987 .
Pickard considers the battle over public television and radio , which resulted in many fewer institutions ( and with far less money ) than media reformers originally envisioned .
And even after it became clear that the 2008 financial crisis was destroying America ’ s newspapers , the federal government and the FCC in particular chose to do basically nothing about it .
Insisting in 2011 that “ government is simply not the main player in this drama , ” the FCC concluded that all the media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advertising , and support from philanthropists .
These recommendations were assailed at the time as falling far short of what was required .
More than 120 news outlets were shuttered in 2008 and the first three months of 2009 ; others shrank , and an estimated 13,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2008 , followed by another 15,000 in 2009 .
Since then , the growth of Big Tech has further confounded the industry .
Unregulated , Google and Facebook have taken away what little advertising revenue remained in the hands of newspapers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as WhatsApp and Twitter have spread vast amounts of misinformation , sparking violence and killings in India , Mexico , Myanmar , and Nigeria , to name just a few examples .
Pickard has spent years working with the media activists at Free Press , a nonprofit organization that supports independent media and has called for the major social media platforms to be taxed more aggressively , and in Democracy Without Journalism ?
he draws from this experience to make his case for greater government investment in media outlets .
A dedicated tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as $ 2 billion for independent journalism , he notes , but he quickly adds that this should be only a start .
What the country needs is a public media fund of about $ 30 billion annually .
It would be paid for by taxing media and platform monopolies and repurposing existing subsidies , with the money flowing directly to a set of genuinely public media institutions .
Pickard ’ s public media fund is a bold idea , and it has already been adopted in some places on a more local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example , Free Press was able to persuade the state government to set aside funds for the Civic Information Consortium , which has a mandate to revitalize local media , particularly in “ underserved , low-income areas and communities of color.
” The New Jersey program , Pickard argues , could be extended to most states to help create public radio and TV stations , and the Los Angeles Times recently put forward a raft of proposals as well , including making it easier for news outlets to convert to not-for-profit status , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 ; low- or no-interest loans for communities that want to set up locally owned news outlets ; and tax deductions for subscriptions to nonprofit news sources .
But all of these proposals still require political will—and right now , neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have embraced them .
Some of the most inspiring sections of Democracy Without Journalism ?
are those that discuss the news media outside the United States where a political will has been present .
As Pickard observes , many countries have secured quality independent journalism through public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subsidize the press , as do Australia , Canada , Germany , and the UK .
The BBC proposed the Local Democracy Foundation and is now funding journalists to cover local council meetings that would otherwise go unreported .
Canada even gives tax credits for digital news subscriptions .
A publicly subsidized news industry would not only allow the United States to keep pace with many of these countries ; it would also clarify how the news itself is a public good .
There is yet another reason to do so : Regulation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the views of local communities to be heard , which are often drowned out by the corporate-backed , syndicated voices of right-wing figures like Hannity and Laura Ingraham .
Pickard ’ s proposals may seem hard to realize , but public media systems all over the world show they can be achieved .
As Pickard reminds us , if we don ’ t take steps now to safeguard journalism , then democracy , such as it is , may not survive the present .

This article appears in the October 19/26, 2020 issue.
Illustration by Tim Robinson.
The importance of accurate information has been all too apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides charting the devastation of the virus, the World Health Organization has mapped a subsequent “infodemic,” a period of often dangerous and inflammatory misinformation circulating globally. This infodemic has had deadly effects. Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro have denied the scale of the pandemic and then peddled false cures, leading to hospitalizations and deaths among people who followed Trump’s advice to drink bleach or take hydroxychloroquine. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi got in on the act, claiming that yoga could increase immunity to Covid-19. Books in Review Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society By Victor Pickard Buy this book
The misinformation would be laughable if it weren’t so deadly. A group of economists studying the pandemic in the United States has shown that as a result of bad information, there have been higher death rates from Covid-19 among viewers of Sean Hannity, a Fox News host who downplayed the threat. Meanwhile, Republican opposition to mask wearing may have contributed to skyrocketing infection rates in the United States in July. Anya Schiffrin would like to thank Chloe Oldham for her research on this article.
Many of the tools used to fight misinformation have proved inadequate. Fact-checking politicians’ statements can be haphazard, and rebuttals often arrive long after the lies have gone viral and may not reach the people exposed to them. Attempts to build trust in the media through audience engagement have been limited in scale and remain mostly local. Twitter and Facebook have attempted to crack down, removing damaging accounts and pointing people to trustworthy sites with reliable information, but both companies have been slow to act. Their business model, after all, is based on audience engagement and outrage, so it’s the controversial and often false information that makes them the most money. There is no financial incentive to crack down.
Reliable information is clearly needed, but journalists find themselves in a difficult position. Although they have been classified as essential workers, tens of thousands have been laid off or furloughed around the world. News audiences have risen dramatically in 2020, but sharply declining revenue in previous years—particularly from advertising—has crippled many newsrooms. Now the economic effects of the pandemic have set the stage for what some are calling a media extinction event.
This is true in the United States, where things are so bad that the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school and research organization, says it’s updating its job loss tracker almost every day. As of this writing, the institute reports that 18 local newspapers have merged, at least 1,500 newsroom staffers have been permanently laid off, a minimum of 20 publications have suspended their print editions, and at least 30 local newsrooms have closed. (Also, journalists of color are often the most likely to be laid off, as The Washington Post reported in May.) But the crumbling of news organizations is not confined to the United States; it is happening all over the world. As the Botswanan journalist Ntibinyane Ntibinyane warned in April, many African newspapers might not survive the pandemic, and the same is true in countries as diverse as Bolivia, Brazil, India, Liberia, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
The desperate situation that the media finds itself in—and that we all face with it as a result—is the focus of Victor Pickard’s new book, Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society. Written before the pandemic hit, the book is all the more relevant in a world transformed by Covid-19. Among other things, it offers a critical examination of US media history, arguing that at crucial moments, a market-centered understanding of the media has undermined the public good that news outlets provide. Yet the book also offers us an important reminder that it is not too late to right this wrong by creating what Pickard calls “a permanent public news media shielded from the market.” The “current crisis,” he says, “offers opportunities for reasserting the public service mission of the press.”
Democracy Without Journalism? is the story of how the United States missed so many opportunities in the past. Pickard begins with the early years of the United States and the tension between American democracy and classical liberalism. For him, the prevailing assumption that laissez-faire politics and “capitalist competition” would best serve “democratic communication” has had disastrous consequences. Far from creating a liberal marketplace of ideas, it has resulted instead in a system dominated by powerful elites who have limited the range of political points of view, narrowed the field of reporting, and starved local news of funds. Related Article In the Shadow of the CMS Kyle Chayka
For Pickard, the abiding faith in the market has not just impeded the flourishing of a truly free and diverse press; it has also hindered our ability to institute policies that might correct this situation. He examines areas like government regulation and monopoly control to illustrate how US policy at key points in history led to the news media’s precarious state today, and he highlights those moments when the United States might have pursued a more democratic path for journalism.
One important example for Pickard is the debate over the role of the press that took place during and after World War II. As Sam Lebovic observes in Free Speech and Unfree News, freedom of the press was viewed as “an obvious antidote to dictatorship” in the wake of the war against fascism and then in the dawning years of the Cold War. Media concentration was likewise seen as a potential danger, spawning a vigorous debate over how to regulate the news industry.
To study this threat, the Commission on Freedom of the Press was established in late 1943. Known as the Hutchins Commission (after its chair, University of Chicago president Robert Hutchins), it held numerous meetings and eventually published a report. But within the commission, analysts were divided. Media reformers wanted to break up the major newspaper monopolies, insisting that freedom from corporate control was an important part of press freedom, but they lost out to those who viewed freedom from government interference as the best way to preserve the marketplace of ideas.
The commission’s “corporate libertarian” views, as Pickard puts it, prevailed, as they did more generally in debates over government support for the media. The Federal Communications Commission, which was established in 1934, hewed to the position that it should play a limited role in regulating the press. By excluding the possibility of government-supported media reporting in the public interest, the FCC left those who wanted to protect journalism fighting with one hand tied behind their back.
Pickard notes that this did not have to be the case. From the nation’s earliest years, the federal government supported the news media in indirect ways. Drawing on the work of Richard John, who examined how the founders viewed the post office as central to the nation’s information infrastructure, Pickard argues not only that the Hutchins Commission was a missed opportunity but also that the debate showed a considerable misunderstanding of the government’s role in the past. Newspapers and magazines, he writes, have long enjoyed various government subsidies, including most obviously from the Postal Service, where over time they accounted for the majority (by weight) of what the post office shipped and delivered. In fact, if one added up all the discounted postal rates that newspapers and magazines have received since the 18th century, the sum would amount to several billion dollars.
Thus government subsidies were an important part of the news industry from its earliest days. The embrace of a corporate libertarian position did not hew to past practices; instead the refusal to invest in the press only marked an abdication on the part of the federal government—one that created an opening for further monopoly control.
Without government funding or regulation, newspapers and broadcasting companies became dependent on advertisers and wealthy owners, setting the stage for the fiercely partisan reporting we see today from the Sinclair Broadcast Group, Fox News, and even more extreme outlets.
The American fidelity to laissez-faire created another problem: As a result of free-market ideology, newspapers and magazines are seen not as a public good but instead as commodities to be sold for profit by private companies outside the control of public institutions.
In Democracy Without Journalism? Pickard outlines a series of proposals to create a more robust news media in the United States and thus a more democratic society. He calls for the creation of a fund that would support local journalism, especially in the country’s growing number of news deserts, and for stronger privacy restrictions and more regulatory bodies to prevent further consolidation in the industry.
All of these policies are perfectly reasonable and, as Pickard shows in the book’s sections on other countries, are currently enjoyed by many other parts of the world. But he also recognizes that the notion of a government-funded media system remains anathema to many in the United States—especially (but not only) to Republicans, who have long opposed an expansive role for the FCC and government regulation of huge media companies. In his book’s last chapters, Pickard surveys many of the ongoing battles between Republicans and Democrats over the role of the FCC, as well as the prospect of more public subsidies for newspapers, radio, and television.
Instead of effective corporate regulation, the Fairness Doctrine—the 1949 replacement for the Mayflower Doctrine, which constrained broadcasters from editorializing—had long served as a consolation prize for media reformers. It required broadcasters to cover socially important issues and to fairly present opposing sides. But even that proved too much for Republicans, who repeatedly framed the policy as an attack on broadcasters’ free speech until it was revoked by Congress in 1987.
Pickard considers the battle over public television and radio, which resulted in many fewer institutions (and with far less money) than media reformers originally envisioned. And even after it became clear that the 2008 financial crisis was destroying America’s newspapers, the federal government and the FCC in particular chose to do basically nothing about it. Insisting in 2011 that “government is simply not the main player in this drama,” the FCC concluded that all the media needed was more transparency, increased government advertising, and support from philanthropists. These recommendations were assailed at the time as falling far short of what was required. More than 120 news outlets were shuttered in 2008 and the first three months of 2009; others shrank, and an estimated 13,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2008, followed by another 15,000 in 2009.
Since then, the growth of Big Tech has further confounded the industry. Unregulated, Google and Facebook have taken away what little advertising revenue remained in the hands of newspapers and magazines. Social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter have spread vast amounts of misinformation, sparking violence and killings in India, Mexico, Myanmar, and Nigeria, to name just a few examples.
Pickard has spent years working with the media activists at Free Press, a nonprofit organization that supports independent media and has called for the major social media platforms to be taxed more aggressively, and in Democracy Without Journalism? he draws from this experience to make his case for greater government investment in media outlets. A dedicated tax on online advertising could raise as much as $2 billion for independent journalism, he notes, but he quickly adds that this should be only a start. What the country needs is a public media fund of about $30 billion annually. It would be paid for by taxing media and platform monopolies and repurposing existing subsidies, with the money flowing directly to a set of genuinely public media institutions.
Pickard’s public media fund is a bold idea, and it has already been adopted in some places on a more local scale. In New Jersey, for example, Free Press was able to persuade the state government to set aside funds for the Civic Information Consortium, which has a mandate to revitalize local media, particularly in “underserved, low-income areas and communities of color.”
The New Jersey program, Pickard argues, could be extended to most states to help create public radio and TV stations, and the Los Angeles Times recently put forward a raft of proposals as well, including making it easier for news outlets to convert to not-for-profit status, as The Salt Lake Tribune did in 2019; low- or no-interest loans for communities that want to set up locally owned news outlets; and tax deductions for subscriptions to nonprofit news sources. But all of these proposals still require political will—and right now, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have embraced them.
Some of the most inspiring sections of Democracy Without Journalism? are those that discuss the news media outside the United States where a political will has been present. As Pickard observes, many countries have secured quality independent journalism through public funding and regulation. Norway and Sweden subsidize the press, as do Australia, Canada, Germany, and the UK. The BBC proposed the Local Democracy Foundation and is now funding journalists to cover local council meetings that would otherwise go unreported. Canada even gives tax credits for digital news subscriptions.
A publicly subsidized news industry would not only allow the United States to keep pace with many of these countries; it would also clarify how the news itself is a public good. There is yet another reason to do so: Regulation and funding can make it possible for the views of local communities to be heard, which are often drowned out by the corporate-backed, syndicated voices of right-wing figures like Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Pickard’s proposals may seem hard to realize, but public media systems all over the world show they can be achieved. As Pickard reminds us, if we don’t take steps now to safeguard journalism, then democracy, such as it is, may not survive the present.


thenation--2020-10-06--Claudia Rankine’s Dialogue With America

Claudia Rankine’s Dialogue With America

Among many other things , 20th century Black feminism offered a powerful analysis of social exclusion .
The preeminent midcentury Black feminist Claudia Jones described how poor Black women were frequently excluded not only from the concerns of white liberal society but also from the gains won by Black activists working against racism , the gains won by communists working against capitalism ’ s class system , and the gains won by feminists working against patriarchy .
Poor Black women , she insisted , found themselves left out across the board .
Just Us : An American Conversation Ever since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inclusive and emancipatory politics , Black feminists in the United States have expanded on this line of thinking .
In 1977 the Combahee River Collective decried the “ interlocking ” oppressions of racism , classism , and sexism and the way that Black women tended to be excluded from struggles that combated only one of these oppressions .
In her 1991 article “ Mapping the Margins , ” Kimberlé Crenshaw asserted that a new “ intersectional ” politics was needed to overcome the ways in which anti-racist activism focused primarily on Black men @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women .
Crenshaw , in short , argued that little had changed in the decades since Jones first diagnosed Black women ’ s exclusion .
Since the publication of her first book of poetry , Nothing in Nature Is Private , in 1994 , Claudia Rankine has been among the best chroniclers of the isolation that stems from this exclusion .
In books that combine visual art , lyric verse , and prose poems that are a mix of diary and essay , she has recorded memories of her childhood alienation as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ professor and writer .
Her poems are riddled with encounters with strangers who seem to walk into her , who misunderstand her , who make her feel unknown .
Her friends and family treat her poorly or die , both of which , she tells us in painful detail , leave her feeling even lonelier .
Rankine ’ s representation of loneliness was always political as well as personal , which primed her work for mass appeal when nationwide protests against police violence erupted in 2014 .
Published two months after Officer Darren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mo.
, Rankine ’ s Citizen , with its long poem about police violence , among other things , answered the public ’ s call for a book that captured the Black experience of racist violence in contemporary America .
Critics lauded the collection , which became a New York Times best seller .
Interviews with her appeared everywhere .
She received a MacArthur grant and an endowed professorship at Yale University .
The perennial stranger suddenly became a household name .
Yet as Rankine tells us in her new collection , Just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not lead to the inclusion of her person .
She continued to experience marginalization and its attendant isolation ; being a Black woman in America still led to an endless amount of “ ethical loneliness , ” a term coined by Jill Stauffer in her 2015 book by that name ( and cited by Rankine ) to describe “ the isolation one feels when one , as a violated person or as one member of a persecuted group , has been abandoned by humanity , or by those who have power over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Rankine ’ s abandonment took on new forms as well .
Her experiences of racism , in the midst of her newfound inclusion , led her to feel abandoned in a variety of novel locales : her daughter ’ s school , dinner parties , and her own classes at Yale .
She may have gotten wealthier and famous , but she remained as vulnerable to loneliness as ever .
Rankine ’ s antidote to this loneliness was and continues to be conversation—a strategy on full display in Just Us .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re feeling alone , talk to someone .
But she does not want to talk about just anything .
In Just Us , she speaks with her often white interlocutors about race and how it colors people ’ s experience of the world , no matter the color of their skin .
By helping people confront the way racism shapes their behavior and their lives , she hopes these conversations will not only alleviate her loneliness but also change the conversants and thereby help uproot white supremacy .
Through dialogue about whiteness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help white people see how whiteness leads them to ignore and simultaneously mistreat Black people .
Like Nell Irvin Painter in The History of White People , Karen Brodkin in How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America , and other scholars in whiteness studies , Rankine aims to foreground how white people experience race ( just as Americans of color do ) and how this experience of race and the privilege it entails depends on a system of anti-Blackness .
Like Painter and Brodkin , Rankine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ construction , it has hardened into both a pattern of small everyday behaviors and larger structures of power and violence .
What separates Just Us from these historians ’ work is its focus on personal experience and thought .
By chronicling her experiences as a means of bringing America ’ s racism to the surface , she asks readers to consider those larger structures of power and violence as well as how so many of them , as individuals , have contributed to sustaining a racist society .
By recording her conversations with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her readers too , asking them to think about how whiteness— “ the idea that one can stand apart ” from the violence on which America is built—is a fantasy that “ lives in every moment.
” In her account , the fantasy of whiteness licenses violence against Black people while obscuring that violence and Black people ’ s humanity .
Engaging people in person and readers in her text , Rankine hopes that helping them diagnose America ’ s racist malady will enable them to begin the work of abolishing its attendant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Rankine was born in Kingston , Jamaica , in 1963 and moved with her parents to New York City ’ s the Bronx in 1970 .
As a young adult , she attended Williams College , where she studied with the poet Louise Gluck , and went on to complete an MFA in poetry at Columbia in 1993 .
During these years , she was particularly influenced by the work of Adrienne Rich .
“ There was something about the way in which Rich addressed social issues from a very personal position @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made me want to write.
” Her early poems , accordingly , aimed to merge the personal and the political .
Rankine ’ s investment in forging a private and public poetry proved generative .
By the time she was 41 , she had published three books of poetry .
She also won high praise from critics and readers .
But it was her 2004 collection Don ’ t Let Me Be Lonely that marked a formal and more seismic change .
A mix of prose and verse poetry as well as visual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her original publisher because it was not “ poetry.
” Of course it was , but in a different form : The diaristic prose poems , a blend of Rimbaud and Baldwin , eventually found a publisher at Graywolf and marked the emergence of the voice and form that audiences became familiar with in Citizen .
Claudia Rankine Wants Us to Talk Much of Don ’ t Let Me Be Lonely describes Rankine alone at home , where she leaves the TV on all day .
From the outset , alienation follows closely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died , ” the first poem begins .
Then , when Rankine is young , she sees her father “ sitting on the steps of our home…he looked to me like someone understanding his aloneness .
Loneliness .
His mother was dead.
” Her father flies back to Jamaica for the funeral without Rankine , and he says little about it after his return .
Death , as well as his silence about it , isolates her father and Rankine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , isolation also brings Rankine closer to death .
Later in the poem , she calls the national suicide hotline and says , “ I feel like I am already dead.
” Fifteen minutes later , an ambulance arrives at her home .
Rankine claims she is feeling better , but the attendant will not hear her .
“ You need to come quietly , ” she writes , “ or he will have to restrain you.
” Even while seeking solace , she finds people more willing to hurt than to listen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America reinforces Rankine ’ s sense that she is both vulnerable and alone .
Later in the book , she is watching TV and sees Abner Louima , who was assaulted and sodomized with a broomstick by officers of the New York Police Department in 1997 .
At a press conference after he wins a civil suit against the city , a reporter asks him “ how it feels to be a rich man , ” Rankine writes .
“ Not rich , says Louima .
Lucky , lucky to be alive.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ease with which Black people are killed and the violence so many face just to live .
Louima is lucky because his survival was so unlikely .
Rankine also considers the NYPD ’ s murder of Amadou Diallo .
“ All the shots , ” she writes , “ all forty-one never add up , never become plural , and will not stay in the past .
It felt wasteful to cry at the television set as Amadou Diallo ’ s death was announced.
” The fact that racist violence is such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Diallo , Rankine explains ; the inability to stop police violence only reminds her of “ what we can ’ t do for each other.
” Her powerlessness in the face of anti-Black murder and assault—her inability to revive Diallo or to undo the police attack on Louima—isolates her even from other Black people .
For Rankine , the anti-Blackness that causes this isolation shapes American politics writ large .
In a poem that begins with George W. Bush ’ s election , she speaks of him as a man who can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people were convicted ” for lynching James Byrd Jr. in Texas .
“ You don ’ t know because you don ’ t care , ” she tells Bush .
The sadness she feels from this is a sadness that “ is not really about George W. or our American optimism ” ; it “ lives in the recognition that a life can not matter ” —that the American state devalues certain people ’ s lives , at home and abroad .
The experience of not mattering only deepens during 9/11 , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Towers ’ rubble , policing the public supposedly under attack .
It pursues her when both Republicans and Democrats support war in Iraq .
No matter the state ’ s attempt to call her , a naturalized citizen , into the fold of citizenship , its repeated violence against Black and brown people leaves Rankine feeling as though she doesn ’ t belong .
With Citizen in 2014 , she plumbed America ’ s anti-Blackness at greater length .
Printed on glossy white paper that heightens the black text , Citizen returns to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this time it describes the experiences of an unnamed “ you , ” who seems to be Rankine .
The first poem recalls a series of racist acts : a friend calling her narrator by the name of a Black housekeeper , a friend complaining about having to hire a writer of color instead of a good one , a neighbor calling the police on a Black friend who brings her child home , and her therapist mistaking her for an intruder .
( This is all in the very first poem ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follow . )
Anti-Blackness seems to follow Rankine ’ s narrator everywhere , such that even as she falls asleep at night , the memories of racism come rushing back .
Rankine often finds common cause with Black women and especially Black women athletes .
After a friend calls her speaker a “ nappy-headed ho , ” adopting the racist insult that talk radio host Don Imus directed toward the Rutgers women ’ s basketball team , she feels the joke like an “ injury ” that “ rupture [ s ] along @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexism those women experienced publicly is revived as private pain , an experience that recurs when she watches Serena Williams .
“ Neither her father nor her mother nor her sister , ” Rankine writes , “ could shield her ultimately from people who felt her black body didn ’ t belong on their court , in their world.
” The most egregious of those people is the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki , who pads her bust and butt ( and all but paints her face black ) to imitate Williams .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just an attack on her Blackness but also her gender .
Black women , Rankine reminds us time and again , often become objects of ridicule and vitriol whenever they step into the public eye .
For Rankine , the racism that motivates this denigration of Black women athletes is the same racism that licenses the state murder of Black people across the world .
In a long poem , she recounts the many high-profile episodes of state or state-sanctioned racist homicide—including George Zimmerman ’ s murder of Trayvon Martin , Darryl Dedmon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the London police ’ s murder of Mark Duggan—the abandonment of Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina , and more .
These harrowing events are cumulative , gesturing to a world that produces Black death .
The poem culminates in an unending list : The list goes on , each name a life prematurely ended , but the words fade .
At the bottom , “ In Memory ” is barely visible .
No names follow , because more will come , and the many instances of police murder since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endlessness of state violence toward Black people makes her narrator feel unsafe .
When her partner ( who is , perhaps , Rankine ’ s husband , the white filmmaker and documentary photographer John Lucas ) succumbs to a bout of road rage , she pulls him back into the car as Martin ’ s name rings out on the radio .
“ Though no one seems to be chasing you , ” Rankine writes , “ the justice system has other plans.
” The in memoriam to come may very well be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about police violence lead Citizen to query its causes : white supremacy and the fear of Black people it instills in white Americans .
“ Because white men can ’ t / police their imagination / black people are dying , ” she writes .
While this makes Rankine feel alone and afraid , she finds an antidote in communal self-defense .
After noticing a father who is watching over the neighborhood children as they play to ensure , perhaps , that no one kidnaps them , her narrator also feels protected .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ transformation that recurs when a friend relays a story about a man knocking her child over on public transit .
The friend confronts the man .
“ The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards , ” the friend says , “ like newly found uncles and brothers.
” Forceful and militant self-defense turns strangers into kin , transforming isolation into community and vulnerability into safety .
While kinship forged through self-defense is a possible solution to Black vulnerability in Citizen , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once more dwelling in loneliness .
The first prose poem in Just Us recounts her alienating experiences while traveling .
A white man walks past her in the first-class line because he assumes a Black woman could not be in first class , some white men form their own line to board because their white privilege allows them to do so , and a fellow traveler complains to Rankine that affirmative action kept his son from admission to Yale .
No MacArthur grant or endowed Ivy League professorship can help her escape the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one wonders how much lonelier it is for those not traveling first class ) .
Unlike her earlier books , Just Us focuses increasingly on whiteness .
Drawing on the work of whiteness studies scholars like Cheryl Harris and David Roediger , Rankine seeks to turn it—and not just nonwhiteness—into an object of study .
In her prose poem on traveling first class , she challenges a white man who claims that he does not see color and later strikes up a correspondence with him .
“ I ’ ve thought a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he writes to her .
After he reflected on his childhood , he remembered interracial fights , a white teen using an anti-Black slur , and “ cruelty , from mostly white to black.
” “ The lack of an integrated life , ” Rankine observes , “ meant that no part of his life recognized the treatment of black people as an important disturbance .
To not remember is perhaps not to feel touched by events that don ’ t interfere with your livelihood.
” This focused frustration with whiteness , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marriage .
Though her husband has long been committed to anti-racism , Rankine finds herself increasingly unhappy with his unwillingness to wrestle with his whiteness .
When she tells him about her experiences with white privilege , he criticizes white fragility , but he also “ set himself outside the pattern of white male dominance , ” as though he were not a part of it .
Their conflict reaches a boiling point when she is recovering from cancer .
Rankine tells him that , as a white man , “ he would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black woman , in America.
” When they discuss this comment in marriage counseling , Rankine asks , “ Isn ’ t my husband , whoever else he is , also white America ?
” Or as she puts it elsewhere , “ metaphors can also be realities.
” Increasingly frustrated with white people , Rankine at points begins to wonder if her marriage—to her husband , to America—can last .
Love , ultimately , keeps her in both marriages .
As she explains in a later poem , this is partly due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for whom she remains committed to creating a more just America , “ because I want the world for my daughter.
” She goes on to describe the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 congregants dead and the rally in Charlottesville , Va. , in which white supremacists marched with tiki torches and a counterprotester was killed .
“ What is it we want for our daughter ?
” she asks at the poem ’ s end .
“ I still want the world for my daughter that is more than this world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already in it.
” Rankine wants , in other words , a world in which her daughter does not experience the alienation and the fear of racist violence that she has felt ( and still does ) .
How does Rankine imagine that such a world can be created ?
One hint at a solution lies in her understanding of the problem .
As she writes in the last poem , “ A white supremacist orientation is packaged as universal thinking and objective seeing , which insists on the erasure of anyone—my actual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This form of being.
” The reassertion of the presence and humanity of nonwhite and marginalized people who are the victims of white supremacy , she insists , is a means of undoing this dominant orientation .
Some of this work she does for others by asking them to consider the role of their whiteness in effacing these other groups ’ humanity , and some of it she does for herself : In one poem , Rankine admits her lack of understanding of race among Latinx people and chronicles her journey toward @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other examples in the book , the work of undoing white supremacy , whether it persecutes Black people or other nonwhite or marginalized people , is conversational .
After dreaming of a “ future other than the one that seems to be forming , ” she ends the book with these words : “ Tell me something , one thing , the thing , tell me that thing.
” Speak honestly—speak without taking whiteness as the unmentioned universal standard , speak with the acknowledgment of Black people ’ s humanity—and begin to remake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long years of chronicling her isolation in the face of anti-Black racism , it should come as no surprise that Just Us delves into her ambivalence toward the nation that elected Donald Trump .
“ My own interracial marriage , ” she writes early on in the book , “ also existed inside a racist America whose ways make life more difficult.
” She then wonders , “ Was there a possibility of a love and a laughter that lived outside the structure that brought us together ?
” If there is such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be found in a future made through conversations about race .
By speaking with others , people can begin to undo the world wrought by racism and its consequential isolation and start to make a better future .
Accordingly , Rankine ’ s representations of racism in Just Us tend to be interpersonal .
Although she has discussed unconscious and implicit bias throughout her work , Just Us is the book in which she discusses both forms of bias most explicitly and at the greatest length .
It is also the book in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ways in which whiteness—and especially notions of white innocence—lead white people to forget the role that racism plays in enabling their success .
In diagnosing this problem , she joins James Baldwin in his “ Letter From a Region in My Mind ” ( later included in The Fire Next Time ) in proclaiming , “ Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals , precisely and inexorably , what they do not know about themselves.
” Like Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark , Rankine aims to assert whiteness as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the place of Blackness in constructing whiteness , though Rankine ’ s preferred method for doing so is oral .
Her commitment to the emancipatory possibilities of conversation can , at times , make Just Us a frustrating read .
Time and again , one wonders , why talk at all ?
Why remain friends with people who treat you poorly ?
Why talk to your fellow first-class travelers ?
Why go to dinner parties with white people who cause you so much pain ?
She could say nothing .
Rankine could befriend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , find community in political organizations working against racism ( and , one hopes , the existence of things like first class , the Ivy League , and wealth ) .
Those people and communities will assuredly hurt her at some point , too .
No one is perfect .
But they are more committed to undoing the very systems that Rankine takes so much umbrage at .
They seem like better company , at the very least .
Yet by the end of the book , it becomes clear that Rankine sees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of work .
By confronting those who preach color-blind liberalism and those who are more explicitly racist , she hopes to bring to the fore how race affects every daily interaction in America .
She does this in part because of her commitment to her marriage and to her daughter ’ s future .
But her drive to take part in these conversations also seems to come from a theory of social transformation that holds that the best way to end racism is by educating racists ( as opposed to building power among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Us transforms Rankine ’ s personal conversations into poetry in the hope of starting other conversations that will lead to liberation .
Just as Claudia Jones and Kimberlé Crenshaw brought to light the ways in which political activists could not see Black women ’ s unique oppressions , in the hopes of ending them , so too does Rankine hope to transform the unseen ways race operates in America , in order to prevent further racist violence .
This future orientation makes her latest book pessimistic .
The title of her 2004 collection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lonely , asks readers to prevent her isolation ; the books she has written in the 16 years since then suggest we have failed .
But this pessimism motivates her hope .
Rankine may believe the present moment is a lost cause—she has experienced and witnessed too much violence and trauma to think otherwise—but her pain spurs her to work toward ensuring that her daughter ’ s future and ours are not .

This article appears in the October 19/26, 2020 issue.
Illustration by Joe Ciardiello.
Among many other things, 20th century Black feminism offered a powerful analysis of social exclusion. The preeminent midcentury Black feminist Claudia Jones described how poor Black women were frequently excluded not only from the concerns of white liberal society but also from the gains won by Black activists working against racism, the gains won by communists working against capitalism’s class system, and the gains won by feminists working against patriarchy. Poor Black women, she insisted, found themselves left out across the board. Books in Review Just Us: An American Conversation By Claudia Rankin Buy this book
Ever since Jones’s call for a more inclusive and emancipatory politics, Black feminists in the United States have expanded on this line of thinking. In 1977 the Combahee River Collective decried the “interlocking” oppressions of racism, classism, and sexism and the way that Black women tended to be excluded from struggles that combated only one of these oppressions. In her 1991 article “Mapping the Margins,” Kimberlé Crenshaw asserted that a new “intersectional” politics was needed to overcome the ways in which anti-racist activism focused primarily on Black men and anti-sexist activism focused primarily on white women. Crenshaw, in short, argued that little had changed in the decades since Jones first diagnosed Black women’s exclusion.
Since the publication of her first book of poetry, Nothing in Nature Is Private, in 1994, Claudia Rankine has been among the best chroniclers of the isolation that stems from this exclusion. In books that combine visual art, lyric verse, and prose poems that are a mix of diary and essay, she has recorded memories of her childhood alienation as well as her more recent experiences as a professor and writer. Her poems are riddled with encounters with strangers who seem to walk into her, who misunderstand her, who make her feel unknown. Her friends and family treat her poorly or die, both of which, she tells us in painful detail, leave her feeling even lonelier.
Rankine’s representation of loneliness was always political as well as personal, which primed her work for mass appeal when nationwide protests against police violence erupted in 2014. Published two months after Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Rankine’s Citizen, with its long poem about police violence, among other things, answered the public’s call for a book that captured the Black experience of racist violence in contemporary America. Critics lauded the collection, which became a New York Times best seller. Interviews with her appeared everywhere. She received a MacArthur grant and an endowed professorship at Yale University. The perennial stranger suddenly became a household name.
Yet as Rankine tells us in her new collection, Just Us, the inclusion of her words did not lead to the inclusion of her person. She continued to experience marginalization and its attendant isolation; being a Black woman in America still led to an endless amount of “ethical loneliness,” a term coined by Jill Stauffer in her 2015 book by that name (and cited by Rankine) to describe “the isolation one feels when one, as a violated person or as one member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by humanity, or by those who have power over one’s life’s possibilities.” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Rankine’s abandonment took on new forms as well. Her experiences of racism, in the midst of her newfound inclusion, led her to feel abandoned in a variety of novel locales: her daughter’s school, dinner parties, and her own classes at Yale. She may have gotten wealthier and famous, but she remained as vulnerable to loneliness as ever.
Rankine’s antidote to this loneliness was and continues to be conversation—a strategy on full display in Just Us. This is partly common sense: If you’re feeling alone, talk to someone. But she does not want to talk about just anything. In Just Us, she speaks with her often white interlocutors about race and how it colors people’s experience of the world, no matter the color of their skin. By helping people confront the way racism shapes their behavior and their lives, she hopes these conversations will not only alleviate her loneliness but also change the conversants and thereby help uproot white supremacy. Through dialogue about whiteness as well as Blackness, she hopes to help white people see how whiteness leads them to ignore and simultaneously mistreat Black people. Current Issue View our current issue
Like Nell Irvin Painter in The History of White People, Karen Brodkin in How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, and other scholars in whiteness studies, Rankine aims to foreground how white people experience race (just as Americans of color do) and how this experience of race and the privilege it entails depends on a system of anti-Blackness. Like Painter and Brodkin, Rankine emphasizes that while race is a social construction, it has hardened into both a pattern of small everyday behaviors and larger structures of power and violence.
What separates Just Us from these historians’ work is its focus on personal experience and thought. By chronicling her experiences as a means of bringing America’s racism to the surface, she asks readers to consider those larger structures of power and violence as well as how so many of them, as individuals, have contributed to sustaining a racist society. By recording her conversations with people about whiteness, she talks to her readers too, asking them to think about how whiteness—“the idea that one can stand apart” from the violence on which America is built—is a fantasy that “lives in every moment.” In her account, the fantasy of whiteness licenses violence against Black people while obscuring that violence and Black people’s humanity. Engaging people in person and readers in her text, Rankine hopes that helping them diagnose America’s racist malady will enable them to begin the work of abolishing its attendant violence toward and erasure of Black humanity.
Rankine was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1963 and moved with her parents to New York City’s the Bronx in 1970. As a young adult, she attended Williams College, where she studied with the poet Louise Gluck, and went on to complete an MFA in poetry at Columbia in 1993. During these years, she was particularly influenced by the work of Adrienne Rich. “There was something about the way in which Rich addressed social issues from a very personal position,” Rankine recalled, “that made me want to write.” Her early poems, accordingly, aimed to merge the personal and the political.
Rankine’s investment in forging a private and public poetry proved generative. By the time she was 41, she had published three books of poetry. She also won high praise from critics and readers. But it was her 2004 collection Don’t Let Me Be Lonely that marked a formal and more seismic change. A mix of prose and verse poetry as well as visual art, the book was rejected by her original publisher because it was not “poetry.” Of course it was, but in a different form: The diaristic prose poems, a blend of Rimbaud and Baldwin, eventually found a publisher at Graywolf and marked the emergence of the voice and form that audiences became familiar with in Citizen. Related Article Claudia Rankine Wants Us to Talk Nawal Arjini
Much of Don’t Let Me Be Lonely describes Rankine alone at home, where she leaves the TV on all day. From the outset, alienation follows closely on death’s heels. “There was a time I could say no one I knew well had died,” the first poem begins. Then, when Rankine is young, she sees her father “sitting on the steps of our home…he looked to me like someone understanding his aloneness. Loneliness. His mother was dead.” Her father flies back to Jamaica for the funeral without Rankine, and he says little about it after his return. Death, as well as his silence about it, isolates her father and Rankine, too.
While death spurs isolation, isolation also brings Rankine closer to death. Later in the poem, she calls the national suicide hotline and says, “I feel like I am already dead.” Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance arrives at her home. Rankine claims she is feeling better, but the attendant will not hear her. “You need to come quietly,” she writes, “or he will have to restrain you.” Even while seeking solace, she finds people more willing to hurt than to listen.
The prevalence of anti-Black violence in America reinforces Rankine’s sense that she is both vulnerable and alone. Later in the book, she is watching TV and sees Abner Louima, who was assaulted and sodomized with a broomstick by officers of the New York Police Department in 1997. At a press conference after he wins a civil suit against the city, a reporter asks him “how it feels to be a rich man,” Rankine writes. “Not rich, says Louima. Lucky, lucky to be alive.” For her, this moment foregrounds the ease with which Black people are killed and the violence so many face just to live. Louima is lucky because his survival was so unlikely.
Rankine also considers the NYPD’s murder of Amadou Diallo. “All the shots,” she writes, “all forty-one never add up, never become plural, and will not stay in the past. It felt wasteful to cry at the television set as Amadou Diallo’s death was announced.” The fact that racist violence is such a common Black experience interrupts even her mourning of Diallo, Rankine explains; the inability to stop police violence only reminds her of “what we can’t do for each other.” Her powerlessness in the face of anti-Black murder and assault—her inability to revive Diallo or to undo the police attack on Louima—isolates her even from other Black people.
For Rankine, the anti-Blackness that causes this isolation shapes American politics writ large. In a poem that begins with George W. Bush’s election, she speaks of him as a man who cannot recall “if two or three people were convicted” for lynching James Byrd Jr. in Texas. “You don’t know because you don’t care,” she tells Bush. The sadness she feels from this is a sadness that “is not really about George W. or our American optimism”; it “lives in the recognition that a life can not matter”—that the American state devalues certain people’s lives, at home and abroad.
The experience of not mattering only deepens during 9/11, when cops stand in front of the Twin Towers’ rubble, policing the public supposedly under attack. It pursues her when both Republicans and Democrats support war in Iraq. No matter the state’s attempt to call her, a naturalized citizen, into the fold of citizenship, its repeated violence against Black and brown people leaves Rankine feeling as though she doesn’t belong.
With Citizen in 2014, she plumbed America’s anti-Blackness at greater length. Printed on glossy white paper that heightens the black text, Citizen returns to the theme of being alone, but this time it describes the experiences of an unnamed “you,” who seems to be Rankine. The first poem recalls a series of racist acts: a friend calling her narrator by the name of a Black housekeeper, a friend complaining about having to hire a writer of color instead of a good one, a neighbor calling the police on a Black friend who brings her child home, and her therapist mistaking her for an intruder. (This is all in the very first poem; there are many more anti-Black encounters to follow.) Anti-Blackness seems to follow Rankine’s narrator everywhere, such that even as she falls asleep at night, the memories of racism come rushing back.
Rankine often finds common cause with Black women and especially Black women athletes. After a friend calls her speaker a “nappy-headed ho,” adopting the racist insult that talk radio host Don Imus directed toward the Rutgers women’s basketball team, she feels the joke like an “injury” that “rupture[s] along its suddenly exposed suture.” The racist sexism those women experienced publicly is revived as private pain, an experience that recurs when she watches Serena Williams. “Neither her father nor her mother nor her sister,” Rankine writes, “could shield her ultimately from people who felt her black body didn’t belong on their court, in their world.” The most egregious of those people is the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, who pads her bust and butt (and all but paints her face black) to imitate Williams. This racist caricature of her figure is not just an attack on her Blackness but also her gender. Black women, Rankine reminds us time and again, often become objects of ridicule and vitriol whenever they step into the public eye.
For Rankine, the racism that motivates this denigration of Black women athletes is the same racism that licenses the state murder of Black people across the world. In a long poem, she recounts the many high-profile episodes of state or state-sanctioned racist homicide—including George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin, Darryl Dedmon’s murder of James Craig Anderson, the London police’s murder of Mark Duggan—the abandonment of Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and more. These harrowing events are cumulative, gesturing to a world that produces Black death. The poem culminates in an unending list:
In Memory of Jordan Russell Davis
In Memory of Eric Garner
In Memory of John Crawford
The list goes on, each name a life prematurely ended, but the words fade. At the bottom, “In Memory” is barely visible. No names follow, because more will come, and the many instances of police murder since 2014 have proved her point.
The endlessness of state violence toward Black people makes her narrator feel unsafe. When her partner (who is, perhaps, Rankine’s husband, the white filmmaker and documentary photographer John Lucas) succumbs to a bout of road rage, she pulls him back into the car as Martin’s name rings out on the radio. “Though no one seems to be chasing you,” Rankine writes, “the justice system has other plans.” The in memoriam to come may very well be your own.
Rankine’s fears about police violence lead Citizen to query its causes: white supremacy and the fear of Black people it instills in white Americans. “Because white men can’t / police their imagination / black people are dying,” she writes. While this makes Rankine feel alone and afraid, she finds an antidote in communal self-defense. After noticing a father who is watching over the neighborhood children as they play to ensure, perhaps, that no one kidnaps them, her narrator also feels protected. Self-defense makes him family, a guardian—a transformation that recurs when a friend relays a story about a man knocking her child over on public transit. The friend confronts the man. “The beautiful thing is that a group of men began to stand behind me like a fleet of bodyguards,” the friend says, “like newly found uncles and brothers.” Forceful and militant self-defense turns strangers into kin, transforming isolation into community and vulnerability into safety.
While kinship forged through self-defense is a possible solution to Black vulnerability in Citizen, Rankine’s new collection finds her once more dwelling in loneliness. The first prose poem in Just Us recounts her alienating experiences while traveling. A white man walks past her in the first-class line because he assumes a Black woman could not be in first class, some white men form their own line to board because their white privilege allows them to do so, and a fellow traveler complains to Rankine that affirmative action kept his son from admission to Yale. No MacArthur grant or endowed Ivy League professorship can help her escape the loneliness born of these experiences (though one wonders how much lonelier it is for those not traveling first class).
Unlike her earlier books, Just Us focuses increasingly on whiteness. Drawing on the work of whiteness studies scholars like Cheryl Harris and David Roediger, Rankine seeks to turn it—and not just nonwhiteness—into an object of study. In her prose poem on traveling first class, she challenges a white man who claims that he does not see color and later strikes up a correspondence with him. “I’ve thought a lot about our conversation since that flight,” he writes to her. After he reflected on his childhood, he remembered interracial fights, a white teen using an anti-Black slur, and “cruelty, from mostly white to black.” “The lack of an integrated life,” Rankine observes, “meant that no part of his life recognized the treatment of black people as an important disturbance. To not remember is perhaps not to feel touched by events that don’t interfere with your livelihood.”
This focused frustration with whiteness, at times, strains Rankine’s marriage. Though her husband has long been committed to anti-racism, Rankine finds herself increasingly unhappy with his unwillingness to wrestle with his whiteness. When she tells him about her experiences with white privilege, he criticizes white fragility, but he also “set himself outside the pattern of white male dominance,” as though he were not a part of it. Their conflict reaches a boiling point when she is recovering from cancer. Rankine tells him that, as a white man, “he would have no trouble replacing me, a black woman, in America.” When they discuss this comment in marriage counseling, Rankine asks, “Isn’t my husband, whoever else he is, also white America?” Or as she puts it elsewhere, “metaphors can also be realities.” Increasingly frustrated with white people, Rankine at points begins to wonder if her marriage—to her husband, to America—can last.
Love, ultimately, keeps her in both marriages. As she explains in a later poem, this is partly due to her love for her daughter, for whom she remains committed to creating a more just America, “because I want the world for my daughter.” She goes on to describe the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that left 11 congregants dead and the rally in Charlottesville, Va., in which white supremacists marched with tiki torches and a counterprotester was killed. “What is it we want for our daughter?” she asks at the poem’s end. “I still want the world for my daughter that is more than this world, a world that has our daughter already in it.” Rankine wants, in other words, a world in which her daughter does not experience the alienation and the fear of racist violence that she has felt (and still does).
How does Rankine imagine that such a world can be created? One hint at a solution lies in her understanding of the problem. As she writes in the last poem, “A white supremacist orientation is packaged as universal thinking and objective seeing, which insists on the erasure of anyone—my actual presence, my humanity—who disrupts its reflection. This form of being.” The reassertion of the presence and humanity of nonwhite and marginalized people who are the victims of white supremacy, she insists, is a means of undoing this dominant orientation. Some of this work she does for others by asking them to consider the role of their whiteness in effacing these other groups’ humanity, and some of it she does for herself: In one poem, Rankine admits her lack of understanding of race among Latinx people and chronicles her journey toward learning more.
In these and many other examples in the book, the work of undoing white supremacy, whether it persecutes Black people or other nonwhite or marginalized people, is conversational. After dreaming of a “future other than the one that seems to be forming,” she ends the book with these words: “Tell me something, one thing, the thing, tell me that thing.” Speak honestly—speak without taking whiteness as the unmentioned universal standard, speak with the acknowledgment of Black people’s humanity—and begin to remake the world.
Given Rankine’s long years of chronicling her isolation in the face of anti-Black racism, it should come as no surprise that Just Us delves into her ambivalence toward the nation that elected Donald Trump. “My own interracial marriage,” she writes early on in the book, “also existed inside a racist America whose ways make life more difficult.” She then wonders, “Was there a possibility of a love and a laughter that lived outside the structure that brought us together?” If there is such a possibility, she believes it will be found in a future made through conversations about race. By speaking with others, people can begin to undo the world wrought by racism and its consequential isolation and start to make a better future.
Accordingly, Rankine’s representations of racism in Just Us tend to be interpersonal. Although she has discussed unconscious and implicit bias throughout her work, Just Us is the book in which she discusses both forms of bias most explicitly and at the greatest length. It is also the book in which she turns most profoundly to the ways in which whiteness—and especially notions of white innocence—lead white people to forget the role that racism plays in enabling their success. In diagnosing this problem, she joins James Baldwin in his “Letter From a Region in My Mind” (later included in The Fire Next Time) in proclaiming, “Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.” Like Toni Morrison in Playing in the Dark, Rankine aims to assert whiteness as an object of study as well as the place of Blackness in constructing whiteness, though Rankine’s preferred method for doing so is oral.
Her commitment to the emancipatory possibilities of conversation can, at times, make Just Us a frustrating read. Time and again, one wonders, why talk at all? Why remain friends with people who treat you poorly? Why talk to your fellow first-class travelers? Why go to dinner parties with white people who cause you so much pain? She could say nothing. Rankine could befriend different people, teach at other institutions, find community in political organizations working against racism (and, one hopes, the existence of things like first class, the Ivy League, and wealth). Those people and communities will assuredly hurt her at some point, too. No one is perfect. But they are more committed to undoing the very systems that Rankine takes so much umbrage at. They seem like better company, at the very least.
Yet by the end of the book, it becomes clear that Rankine sees these conversations as doing a particular kind of work. By confronting those who preach color-blind liberalism and those who are more explicitly racist, she hopes to bring to the fore how race affects every daily interaction in America. She does this in part because of her commitment to her marriage and to her daughter’s future. But her drive to take part in these conversations also seems to come from a theory of social transformation that holds that the best way to end racism is by educating racists (as opposed to building power among those persecuted by racism). Just Us transforms Rankine’s personal conversations into poetry in the hope of starting other conversations that will lead to liberation. Just as Claudia Jones and Kimberlé Crenshaw brought to light the ways in which political activists could not see Black women’s unique oppressions, in the hopes of ending them, so too does Rankine hope to transform the unseen ways race operates in America, in order to prevent further racist violence.
This future orientation makes her latest book pessimistic. The title of her 2004 collection, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, asks readers to prevent her isolation; the books she has written in the 16 years since then suggest we have failed. But this pessimism motivates her hope. Rankine may believe the present moment is a lost cause—she has experienced and witnessed too much violence and trauma to think otherwise—but her pain spurs her to work toward ensuring that her daughter’s future and ours are not.


thenation--2020-10-06--Chinatown Will Recover From the Coronavirus

The ongoing struggle for racial justice .
The future for immigrant families .
The health and well-being of all Americans .
The very fate of our fragile planet .
The US faces a crossroads in this year ’ s elections .
Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar , The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What ’ s At Stake , a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers .
Follow the whole series here .
On sunny days , Manhattan ’ s Chinatown feels and looks almost lively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deserted as they were when the coronavirus pandemic first hit New York .
Diners sit at outdoor tables in front of restaurants , masked shoppers line up in front of stores that limit the number of customers inside at any given time .
The unceasing wail of sirens have thankfully died down , but the damage done to New York City—nearly 24,000 dead and countless lives interrupted—will be hard to recover from .
The consequences of the pandemic came to Chinatown early : As President Trump called it the “ China Flu ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local businesses ’ income plummeted in January and February .
Incidents of anti-Asian harassment and violence rose .
By the time the rest of New York City and then the country was locked down in mid-March , Chinatown was already reeling .
And its recovery has been slow and lagging , with many shops closed forever .
I ’ ve been a resident of Chinatown since I was 2 years old , and I confess that as the virus ravaged the elderly at nursing homes , killing them in shocking numbers , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , grandmother , and great-uncles are no longer alive to suffer or die this way .
But I am often reminded of them in the many senior citizens that live in the neighborhood today .
Many speak Toishanese ( Hoisanwa ) , my family ’ s Cantonese variant once dominant in American Chinatowns but long overtaken by standard Cantonese , Mandarin , and Fujianese .
The Chung Pak Senior Housing building is the only retirement home in Chinatown , within easy walking distance to the fresh vegetable , seafood , and meat markets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 88 units have a waiting list of many years .
Its roof is open to the residents and has a blooming vegetable patch that was started as a multigenerational project between the seniors and grade school students from PS 130 .
But this year , the students haven ’ t been able to come .
Mrs. Wong , at age 99 , is one of the older residents , and has lived in Chung Pak for over 10 years .
Like both my parents , she emigrated from Toishan ( 台山 ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ It ’ s been hard .
I ’ ve been stuck at home .
And the home aides didn ’ t come .
They couldn ’ t work .
My daughters took turns coming to take care of me .
They came and stayed the nights .
I ’ m very bored .
But there ’ s no recourse .
I ’ ll go out again when everything opens up again .
I hope it ’ s soon.
” Mrs. Chin , age 85 , came to America in 1976 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) just 12 miles from my parents ’ hometowns of Samhop ( 三合 ) and Ngaugam ( 那金 ) .
She , too , was a garment worker .
She said , “ I ’ m still afraid to move around .
I ’ ve only been out twice , to see doctors : the eye doctor in August and to get my flu shot in September .
My health isn ’ t so good and I have fainting spells .
My most frightening moment of this pandemic time was when I woke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ house was spinning .
It went on for over half an hour until my daughter drove here .
I think it comes from high blood pressure.
” She regretted that “ I ’ m not literate .
There was no chance to go to school ; that was only for boys.
” She did have some advice for me : “ My husband caught wild snakes .
Use the snake to infuse liquor for at least two to three years .
Then drink it .
Snakes are the key to longevity.
” Mrs. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still with her husband ; they live in one of the corner units with stunning views of Little Italy and Chinatown .
But he , suffering from dementia , didn ’ t speak when I visited them .
She said , “ I ’ m depressed .
This pandemic feels like being in jail .
I forget , sometimes , because I don ’ t want to think about it .
It ’ s been hard for our children to visit us in these times , too .
But I do appreciate how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about us.
” Sam Wu , the superintendent , lives in the building , but his staff has been reduced from seven to only one , so he doubles as the doorman .
To make up the shortfall , the residents ’ home health attendants volunteer to mop the floors and stairways .
He encourages them with positive words— “ We must all act as family here , in this emergency ” —and thanks them with gift certificates for the bakery next door .
Only a year in his job , he says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grandchildren , and health aides visiting them all the time , and spending money .
Build a condo , that ’ s just those two young people in a unit .
For the neighborhood to remain sustainable , senior housing is a societal gain.
” Chinatown has been changing in recent years , subject to the same forces pressuring other neighborhoods in the city : gentrification , inequality , rising housing costs .
Add to that the anti-Chinese rhetoric that accompanied the coronavirus crisis , and the neighborhood has needed some protecting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ retired fiber optics engineer and lifelong Chinatown resident , called some friends and formed the Chinatown Block Watch , patrolling the streets on alternating days with the Guardian Angels .
He said , “ More than half of incidents of harassment aren ’ t reported to the police .
I myself have been profiled twice , as a senior .
I was in a line shopping and a guy was following me .
Another store , a person walked right up to me .
Hairs on your back , sixth sense , body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were so empty .
They look for vulnerable targets : Single women walking by themselves and seniors.
” He added that conflicts also arise because of “ language issues : Sometimes a misunderstanding turns into a racist tirade .
People are frustrated , locked down for months , but they have to understand that in an ethnic enclave , not everybody can speak English .
Frustration turns into anger.
” Over the months of walking , Karlin said that they ’ ve had to directly intervene only once : “ We chased a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was making racist remarks to a bunch of old ladies on Grand and Elizabeth [ streets ] .
We ushered him out.
” Grayson Chin , who lives in the same building as Karlin and joined the group at the beginning , added , “ You don ’ t hear about Asians fighting back , and anti-Asian sentiment is still going on .
We just want to be a visible deterrent , so that Asians feel safer and better.
” The small , family-run businesses that make Chinatown unique are also under threat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Grand Street , owner Huang Weizhou told me , “ We reopened on May 25 but we ’ re down to seven employees from over a dozen , and my wife and I are here seven days a week from 6 am to 7 pm .
She hadn ’ t needed to come in for years , but she ’ s full-time now .
We just barely started breaking even again .
Some of our workers , they ’ re the only wage-earner in their family.
” Huang was glad to receive an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Longevity Fund small-business grants , a nonprofit initiative that formed in response to the pandemic .
Jennifer Yu Tam and Victoria Lee both work in corporate jobs , and at first glance , might seem to be unlikely activists ; they are of the younger generation that is more fluent in English than Cantonese , that fulfilled their families ’ aspirations for upward mobility .
They wrote on their website , “ The prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic poses a great risk to accelerate the gentrification of Chinatown and the displacement of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shuttering of such businesses would not only result in the loss of one of the oldest Chinese enclaves and one of the most culturally significant neighborhoods for Asian Americans , but it would also pose an irreversible risk to the working class residents it uplifts.
” In Columbus Park , Chinatown ’ s largest public space , the Chinese chess players are back at their tables , but removing their masks only to smoke and drink coffee .
Life goes on , but hardly normally : At Chatham Square , a long line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of the China National Day celebration on October 1 .
On Mulberry Street , later that same week , the decades-old Lung Moon Bakery shuttered its doors for the last time , another storied business disappeared .
Manhattan ’ s Chinatown has been part of the New York ’ s landscape and history since the 1850s .
It has endured the Chinese Exclusion Act , racist housing and hiring practices , world wars , recessions , and depressions .
I was the first of my family to be born in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without an accent .
I am old enough to remember when the old men and women in Columbus Park were people born in the 1890s , under the empire ruled by the Qing Dynasty .
I find myself in this pandemic moment thinking a lot about their extraordinary courage and tenacity .
I am confident that our generation of Chinatown , too , will survive .
Now , as then , that task remains full of challenge and struggle .

The ongoing struggle for racial justice. The future for immigrant families. The health and well-being of all Americans. The very fate of our fragile planet. The US faces a crossroads in this year’s elections. Seeking out the stories flying under the national radar, The Nation and Magnum Foundation are partnering on What’s At Stake, a series of photo essays from across the country through the lenses of independent imagemakers. Follow the whole series here.
On sunny days, Manhattan’s Chinatown feels and looks almost lively again. Streets are no longer as deserted as they were when the coronavirus pandemic first hit New York. Diners sit at outdoor tables in front of restaurants, masked shoppers line up in front of stores that limit the number of customers inside at any given time. The unceasing wail of sirens have thankfully died down, but the damage done to New York City—nearly 24,000 dead and countless lives interrupted—will be hard to recover from.
The consequences of the pandemic came to Chinatown early: As President Trump called it the “China Flu” and the “China Plague,” local businesses’ income plummeted in January and February. Incidents of anti-Asian harassment and violence rose. By the time the rest of New York City and then the country was locked down in mid-March, Chinatown was already reeling. And its recovery has been slow and lagging, with many shops closed forever.
I’ve been a resident of Chinatown since I was 2 years old, and I confess that as the virus ravaged the elderly at nursing homes, killing them in shocking numbers, I was mournfully relieved that my own parents, grandmother, and great-uncles are no longer alive to suffer or die this way. But I am often reminded of them in the many senior citizens that live in the neighborhood today. Many speak Toishanese (Hoisanwa), my family’s Cantonese variant once dominant in American Chinatowns but long overtaken by standard Cantonese, Mandarin, and Fujianese.
The Chung Pak Senior Housing building is the only retirement home in Chinatown, within easy walking distance to the fresh vegetable, seafood, and meat markets that Chinatown is famous for. Its 88 units have a waiting list of many years. Its roof is open to the residents and has a blooming vegetable patch that was started as a multigenerational project between the seniors and grade school students from PS 130. But this year, the students haven’t been able to come.
Mrs. Wong, at age 99, is one of the older residents, and has lived in Chung Pak for over 10 years. Like both my parents, she emigrated from Toishan (台山) and was a garment worker. She said, “It’s been hard. I’ve been stuck at home. And the home aides didn’t come. They couldn’t work. My daughters took turns coming to take care of me. They came and stayed the nights. I’m very bored. But there’s no recourse. I’ll go out again when everything opens up again. I hope it’s soon.”
Mrs. Chin, age 85, came to America in 1976, from the town of Doushan (斗山) just 12 miles from my parents’ hometowns of Samhop (三合) and Ngaugam (那金). She, too, was a garment worker. She said, “I’m still afraid to move around. I’ve only been out twice, to see doctors: the eye doctor in August and to get my flu shot in September. My health isn’t so good and I have fainting spells. My most frightening moment of this pandemic time was when I woke up and it felt like the whole house was spinning. It went on for over half an hour until my daughter drove here. I think it comes from high blood pressure.” She regretted that “I’m not literate. There was no chance to go to school; that was only for boys.” She did have some advice for me: “My husband caught wild snakes. Use the snake to infuse liquor for at least two to three years. Then drink it. Snakes are the key to longevity.”
Mrs. Lee was the only resident I met still with her husband; they live in one of the corner units with stunning views of Little Italy and Chinatown. But he, suffering from dementia, didn’t speak when I visited them. She said, “I’m depressed. This pandemic feels like being in jail. I forget, sometimes, because I don’t want to think about it. It’s been hard for our children to visit us in these times, too. But I do appreciate how the staff here have been very concerned about us.”
Sam Wu, the superintendent, lives in the building, but his staff has been reduced from seven to only one, so he doubles as the doorman. To make up the shortfall, the residents’ home health attendants volunteer to mop the floors and stairways. He encourages them with positive words—“We must all act as family here, in this emergency”—and thanks them with gift certificates for the bakery next door. Only a year in his job, he says, “Seniors have their children, grandchildren, and health aides visiting them all the time, and spending money. Build a condo, that’s just those two young people in a unit. For the neighborhood to remain sustainable, senior housing is a societal gain.”
Chinatown has been changing in recent years, subject to the same forces pressuring other neighborhoods in the city: gentrification, inequality, rising housing costs. Add to that the anti-Chinese rhetoric that accompanied the coronavirus crisis, and the neighborhood has needed some protecting. In February, Karlin Chan, a retired fiber optics engineer and lifelong Chinatown resident, called some friends and formed the Chinatown Block Watch, patrolling the streets on alternating days with the Guardian Angels. He said, “More than half of incidents of harassment aren’t reported to the police. I myself have been profiled twice, as a senior. I was in a line shopping and a guy was following me. Another store, a person walked right up to me. Hairs on your back, sixth sense, body language. In early March the streets were so empty. They look for vulnerable targets: Single women walking by themselves and seniors.”
He added that conflicts also arise because of “language issues: Sometimes a misunderstanding turns into a racist tirade. People are frustrated, locked down for months, but they have to understand that in an ethnic enclave, not everybody can speak English. Frustration turns into anger.”
Over the months of walking, Karlin said that they’ve had to directly intervene only once: “We chased a guy out of the neighborhood. He was making racist remarks to a bunch of old ladies on Grand and Elizabeth [streets]. We ushered him out.” Grayson Chin, who lives in the same building as Karlin and joined the group at the beginning, added, “You don’t hear about Asians fighting back, and anti-Asian sentiment is still going on. We just want to be a visible deterrent, so that Asians feel safer and better.”
The small, family-run businesses that make Chinatown unique are also under threat. At the Double Crispy Bakery on Grand Street, owner Huang Weizhou told me, “We reopened on May 25 but we’re down to seven employees from over a dozen, and my wife and I are here seven days a week from 6 am to 7 pm. She hadn’t needed to come in for years, but she’s full-time now. We just barely started breaking even again. Some of our workers, they’re the only wage-earner in their family.”
Huang was glad to receive an application for Welcome To Chinatown’s Longevity Fund small-business grants, a nonprofit initiative that formed in response to the pandemic. Jennifer Yu Tam and Victoria Lee both work in corporate jobs, and at first glance, might seem to be unlikely activists; they are of the younger generation that is more fluent in English than Cantonese, that fulfilled their families’ aspirations for upward mobility. They wrote on their website, “The prolonged impact of the COVID-19 pandemic poses a great risk to accelerate the gentrification of Chinatown and the displacement of its residents and small businesses. The shuttering of such businesses would not only result in the loss of one of the oldest Chinese enclaves and one of the most culturally significant neighborhoods for Asian Americans, but it would also pose an irreversible risk to the working class residents it uplifts.”
In Columbus Park, Chinatown’s largest public space, the Chinese chess players are back at their tables, but removing their masks only to smoke and drink coffee. Life goes on, but hardly normally: At Chatham Square, a long line formed for a free mask distribution as part of the China National Day celebration on October 1. On Mulberry Street, later that same week, the decades-old Lung Moon Bakery shuttered its doors for the last time, another storied business disappeared.
Manhattan’s Chinatown has been part of the New York’s landscape and history since the 1850s. It has endured the Chinese Exclusion Act, racist housing and hiring practices, world wars, recessions, and depressions. I was the first of my family to be born in the United States and the first to speak English without an accent. I am old enough to remember when the old men and women in Columbus Park were people born in the 1890s, under the empire ruled by the Qing Dynasty. I find myself in this pandemic moment thinking a lot about their extraordinary courage and tenacity. I am confident that our generation of Chinatown, too, will survive. Now, as then, that task remains full of challenge and struggle.