The first chapter is a poem. In its stanzas, Rankine poses questions to the reader and attempts to explain why she is asking those questions. She wonders how “a call to change” is identified instead as “shame, / named penance, named chastisement?” (Lines 8-9). She acknowledges her own feelings of resignation and weariness within, which demand the release of questions. She realizes that this call for something to change may be perceived as repetitive. She addresses the reader directly, wondering if what she really wants is something “newly made / a new sentence in response to all [her] questions” (Lines 66-67) so that there can be a change in her relation to this perceived reader. She wants this reader to understand that she is present. She wants the reader to care. She also wants this imagined reader to understand that their mutual desires for justice and openings run parallel to each other.

It is 2016, around the time of the presidential election, and Rankine is preparing a course on whiteness. She has just been hired to teach at Yale University. During the class, students ask questions about redlining or if George Washington had freed his slaves. Someone else asks about