My research and understanding of these sections adapted for my blog. Originally "Citizen Google Doc Discussion - Parts IV-VI"
In these sections it started off powerful by explaining how sighing is a worrying negative noise. From there it transitioned into talking about how your feelings and memory gives you headaches. The two specific sentences which drew me to section IV was when Rankine said, “The head’s ache evaporates into a state of numbness, a cave of sighs. Over the years you lose the melodrama of seeing yourself as a patient” (Section IV). This is because of how saddening it was to see how the speaker feels numb and at a dead, painful halt in their life all due to racism. The past memories of discrimination never leave the speakers mind and only continue to stab deeper into her brain causing more pain. I also believe that in this section the speaker faces a moment of mental dissociation. The speaker pondered for a bit wondering what a person actually consists of and how she feels disconnected from her own body. A strong line which proved this was, “You begin to move around in search of the steps it will take before you are thrown back into your own body, back into your own need to be found” (Rankine, Section IV). Something which also stood out to me in section VI was the line in which Rankine writes, “Those years of and before me and my brothers, the years of passage, plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation, of poverty, inner cities, profiling, of one in three, two jobs, boy, hey boy, each a felony, accumulate into the hours inside our lives where we are all caught hanging, the rope inside us, the tree inside us, its roots our limbs, a throat sliced through and when we open our mouth to speak, blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out, brother, dear brother, that kind of blue” (Section VI). I selected this as a strong line because it was very long and extremely powerful. It really hits you with a slap of reality about the excruciating past African Americans have faced and are still seeing the lasting effects of. Also it explains the lines in section IV when the speaker mentions blue light in relation to her dissociation.
Some things I learned from my research were very interesting. In section VI once it gets to the pickup truck story, Rankine uses the word “patronizes” while describing how an announcer referred to a murderer as just a teen or blond man (Section VI). This word can mean to refer to others as if you are superior to them which is exactly how the blond murderer who ran an African American man over was thinking (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). He thought he was superior because he was white while to patronize has a similar meaning. It also showed how the announcer also felt superior while telling the story. Another thing I learned was when I searched up the image in section VI titled Blue Black Boy by Carrie Mae Weems. In the Albright-Knox Art Gallery website, the image is shown with a brief description about how it was created with numerous meanings. Personally I think the image was included to again strengthen the repetition of the word and meaning of “blue”. Rankine wants us to realize the deeper meaning behind the color blue and see how it can mean pain and sadness worse than what we can say in words.
My overall understanding of these two sections is that Rankine wanted to give us very descriptive real life examples of negative experiences so that we could see and feel the pain the innocent went through. A specific example from Section VI was when there was a story about how the police pulled over an African American man even though he was obviously not the person who fit the description and proceeded to place their knee on his collarbone (Section VI). This scene can relate to today's police brutality. The one to come to mind when reading this was the unfortunate unjust death of George Floyd by the hands of racist police. This sparked many reform and defunding debates across the country. These sections also strengthen the previous sections of the book up to this point by giving us vivid views of how bad the discrimination got. The book started off with smaller, less vivid paragraphs and worked its way into a full blown experience.
