Saintly Anger

What I am going to write about today extends beyond my capacity. I want to mention it anyway, because I know there is more there.

It has been a week now since the exchange where the uninformed incoherent guy told me not to bother answering. It made me mad, and at the end of that I had overcome my fear of being annoying.

A little over two years ago, getting angry freed me from my belief that there was perpetually something fundamentally wrong with me. 

Those both go so far back; even when we take into consideration other experiences had and lessons learned along that way, it is miraculous that a brief flash of anger can be so illuminating, burning up an old poison.

That makes it sadder that anger is so frequently seen as something to push away and deny and choke down.

I understand the reasons. People can do great harm while angry. It doesn't necessarily facilitate logical thinking. 

It can also be tempting to use anger as a mask for grief or fear, but if avoiding those feelings is harmful, then surely avoiding anger can be harmful too. 

We need to listen to what our emotions are telling us. 

Anger is the voice that tells me "This is wrong." 

When I believe something false, seeped into me from before I can remember, anger shouting that this is wrong is liberating. 

If anger tells me something is wrong, but once facing that I see that it is not that important and I can let it go, that is also liberating.

Anger can also be a call to the work of liberation, something harder but necessary.

This is where I get beyond my scope.

I had been thinking about anger anyway. In December I read I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. I highly recommend it anyway, for multiple reasons, but what she wrote about anger struck me. She wrote about fighting it at first, for reasons I relate to, but then realizing that it could be creative. 

We often conflate creativity with innovation, but building something is also creative, even if it follows a pattern, or has happened before.

Brown did not expound on that a lot, but she did mention learning from Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider, which I just finished on March 28th.  I knew at the time I that I was not done with it, so I have held on to the copy, re-reading passages. 

Lorde's specific essays on anger deal with racism, in different facets. 

I also just finished the September Vanity Fair with Breonna Taylor on the cover, and her inside, but much about George Floyd as well. 

Through sheer procrastination and too much to do, I read it at the time of the trial of his killer, and the death of Daunte Wright, and news about the police harassment of Caron Nazario (support our troops!), and all of this at a time when the police are under increased scrutiny, but still not even trying.

I think of the James Baldwin quote "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

Then I think of that thing that I periodically read, where people react badly to unfairness, but if they feel like they can't change it they will react badly to their impotence, so try and justify the unfairness (e.g. they need to quit resisting arrest).

Let me go back a bit. An ignorant white man telling a woman that her disagreeing answer was not welcome is small, but it is a part of that same patriarchy that enfolds racism and misogyny and all other bigotries.

My raised poor but smart father, with some good intentions but a lot of selfishness and an unwillingness to ever take the blame -- from whom my insecurities sprung -- folds into patriarchy as well.

Resolving the inner vulnerabilities of one pretty self-aware (and awesome) woman is relatively easy, especially compared to solving systemic, structural racism. It will take a lot of anger. 

It will take feeling that anger, and not being consumed by it, and not given into despair followed by acceptance instead.

It has to be possible, and there is liberation on the other side, and it is euphoric.

Even for the white guys who fight it hardest, equality will be better. Inclusion, freedom, integration, acceptance, expansion... it will be better for everyone.

Individual healing will be happening all along the way.

Let's get moving.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-power-of-hate.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/02/if-youre-angry-and-you-know-it.html