Summary

In Chapter 17, “josé martí” (231), Rankine is attending a dinner party where a man says his son is shipping off for military service. A white woman who works as a judge says her son is moving to Brooklyn. Rankine finds these two statements incongruous. She then discusses the valuation of different races by society. At the party she also meets a Latina artist, with whom she discusses white-identifying Latinx people. The artist educates her on several issues, telling her, for instance, that many view the term “Hispanic” (243) as offensive. Rankine presents another friend's written account of her work as an academic studying black culture in which she mentions that it is difficult to have conversations with colleagues without comparing their experiences as members of marginalized communities through the rhetoric of the “oppression olympics” (249). Rankine wonders again about the purpose of conversation...