Claudia Rankine’s ‘Just Us’ explores difficult conversations about race, whiteness

By Jeff Rowe
The African American man whose beating by Los Angeles Police ignited civil upheaval in 1992 famously said later: “Can’t we all just get along?”
The answer to Rodney King’s question, which has taken on renewed importance these past months: Not yet.
And as readers learn in “Just Us: An American Conversation,” by poet, playwright and Yale University professor Claudia Rankine — an unusual mix of essays, narratives, poems, pictures and musings &m