Many things come to mind when one imagines blackness. Some may associate it with nighttime, or darkness; while others see it as a skin color, or even an identity. Because of this portrayal, our society continues to struggle with the problem of racism. Dating back to before slavery, African Americans have been labeled as black; but why is that? When you think about black as a color, you don’t think of it as pertaining to the color of one’s skin, because no one’s skin color is truly black. Rather, skin appears in various shades of beige to brown, and every tone in between. In Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, she discusses how being a person of color has become a way to define someone’s identity, and how it affects the way in which one lives. Rankine
