Close Talking

In this episode, Connor and Jack explore an excerpt from Claudia Rankine's book Don't Let Me Be Lonely. They discuss how the poem conveys the toll of anti-Blackness on the psyche of Black Americans, "hope" and electoral politics, the brilliant use of "flat prose," and listen to the voices and sounds of The Staples, Cornel West, George W. Bush, and Kanye West. More on Rankine here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/claudia-rankine Read the poem here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57804/dont-let-me-be-lonely-cornel-west-makes-the-point from Don't Let Me Be Lonely By: Claudia Rankine Cornel West makes the point that hope is different from American optimism. After the initial presidential election results come in, I stop watching the news. I want to continue watching, charting, and discussing the counts, the recounts, the hand counts, but I can­not. I lose hope. However Bush came to have won, he would still be winning ten days later and we would still be in the throes of our American optimism.