A Play by Play of Claudia Rankine's Response to Tony Hoagland at AWP Washington, DC

The audience clapped—many people in the audience clapped—and Rankine began her remarks. She said, "I don't like to use the word 'racist.'" She discussed how using that word immediately catapults the speaker, if black, into an "angry black person" stereotype. She described her first experience of reading the poem as one of not even anger or offense but of shock, bewilderment; as she read she asked