Just Us: An American Conversation

How does Rankine examine her own privilege in relation to that of her white friends, colleagues, and travel companions? What distinctions does she draw, and how do these distinctions reinforce her thesis?

How does Rankine’s integration of photography and social media texts provide further contextual evidence of the points that she raises? How might this media be more effective that the research-based notes that conclude her chapters?

Rankine argues, in the second chapter, that phrases such as “white fragility,” “white defensiveness,” and “white appropriation” disrupt our ability to have true conversations about race? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Rankine integrates conversations and letters between her and both white and Black friends into some chapters. How do these personal interactions reinforce the book’s intent, as suggested by the title? How might they also disrupt the reader’s ability to engage more objectively with the work? Is it possible to receive Rankine’s ideas objectively in so personal a text? Why or why not?

Would you read Just Us as a Black feminist text? Why or why not?

How does the idea of intersectionality, a critical race theory developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, help us understand the ways in which race, gender, class, and sexual orientation can differentially impact experiences of discrimination and our ability to hear others’ stories? Describe the ways in which this theory is applicable to some of Rankine’s conversations about race with friends (e.g., white women, a Latin woman artist).

Rankine suggests that conversations between people across racial boundaries may more likely result in understanding than “entangled empathy”—the ability to see oneself within “a complicated set of relations” (230). Do you think that understanding is possible without “entangled empathy” or the recognition of oneself as a cause or factor in someone else’s pain or oppression? Why or why not?

In the chapter on “whiteness,” Rankine explores the impact of globalized racism, focusing on a 2016 Chinese laundry soap ad that features a Black man being stuffed into a washing machine only to reemerge as a light-skinned Asian man. How does this moment reinforce and address Rankine’s encounter with an Asian student who accused her mother of being racist?