There’s one question that Claudia Rankine never wants to hear again. In fact, it’s one the poet finds so asinine that she ended up writing a whole play about it. The White Card, which has been touring the UK ahead of its final stop in London’s Soho Theatre, was inspired by the time a white man asked her: “How can I help you?”
The (un)inspiring phrase came her way at a discussion session for her 2014 Forward Prize-winning poetic work, Citizen: An American Lyric, which details the growth of racial aggression in current-day America. The man stood up. He praised her work. And then he asked: “What can I do for you? How can I help you?” For Rankine, it was a tiresome enquiry, “one that you hear all the time from benevolent white people”. She shakes her head, topped with short, natural curls, all different shades of grey. She speaks with a measured calmness to her voice, but her exasperation at the situation feels real.
