As part of this blog series, I will, from to time to time explore certain themes. Yesterday's post might fall under the theme of Things to Stop Saying. This one is under Themes in Racism. Here I will explore certain racist ideologies, presumptions, and prejudices that have become baked into our society over time, to the extent that most of the time we are unaware of their presence or their power. Today I want to focus on the fear of black rage.
Anger is like fire. Uncontained, it can be deadly, destroying everything in its path. We have a whole organization whose primary duty is to put out fires roaring out of control. But fire is not, in and of itself, evil. Contained, channeled, and put to productive use it's useful, even necessary. So it is with anger. We are discomfited by it, but it can be the right response and the necessary driver of change.
Which bring us to black anger. A fear of black anger and an obsession with controlling it have long been a feature of American society. Here's my armchair historian's take on why that is (real historians who have a better understanding are welcome to correct me; I'm not opposed to learning):
At first, the fear of black anger and the need to control it were born out of necessity. Slavery was, after all, the "necessary evil" and white people knew deep down that it was wrong. They knew what they would want to do, what they would do, if they were in the slave's position. The occasional violent slave revolt struck fear into the heart of every master. After all in some places the slaves outnumbered the owners by a huge margin. Many of the restrictions on slaves--on education, on meeting together, on gun ownership-- as well as the brutal punishments meted out to slaves were meant to prevent them from unleashing the wrath that surely must be there, burning under the surface.
This is one reason there has been a long history of irritation with agitators on the part of white people. In the antebellum South, slave owners blamed abolitionists and other interfering folks for stirring up the slaves who until then had been perfectly happy. Segregationists fussed about Yankees coming down and getting black folks all upset about being separated, upsetting the order of things that had worked just fine for everyone. And today we still hear carping about those that stir up division (i.e. dissatisfaction) with their Black Lives Matter protests.
Attendant with this pragmatism was the presumption of black pathology--that we were savage, unable to control ourselves, that if we were given free reign we would run amuck. Black people and their wild rage needed to checked for their own good as well as that of white society.
This sensibility about black anger has had a good four hundred years to sink deep into our society, so that now in 2020 when black people express anger the instinctive response is to shut it down. You may think I'm headed towards the violence that has broken out at the protests over the past several days but that's actually another post. No, here I'm referring to when black people express their rage and anguish verbally. Event the mildest expressions of black wrath (such as this blog) are met with instantaneous discomfort and nervousness, even among our allies. More overt expressions of anger are met with outright condemnation. There are the paternalistic pleas to "calm down", that nothing is ever accomplished by shouting (and that may be true, but you'll notice when the open-up protesters were out a few weeks ago with their guns, screaming in the faces of their opponents there was no great call for them to calm down. No one was worried about what "might happen" if these guys didn't settle down and talk things over reasonably). White society still is fearful of black anger even if it is only spoken.
Ironically, black people have suffered terribly at hands of white wrath over the years. From the massacre in Tulsa that destroyed Black Wall Street, to the many lynchings of black people by enraged white mobs to the abuse poured on civil rights protesters during the civil rights movement, white fury has run wild over black people. Yet no one has ever thought to ponder the pathology of white anger or to propose that measures be taken to keep them calm. And my argument is not that we should develop such a theory of white pathology. Instead we need to extend the same presumption of maturity to black people that we do white people. Just like we do with white people, we need to chalk up the occasional act of violent, damaging anger by black persons as the acts of individuals rather than implicating all black people.
The affluent Greenwood District (also known as Black Wall Street) of Tulsa, Oklahoma after it was burned to the ground--all 35 blocks of it-by white rioters in 1921. Every black resident of the community had been detained in a nearby convention hall and fairgrounds and white rioters went through the district looting it before burning it down.
The impulse to tamp down black anger is harmful for two reasons. First, it's not good for our mental health to be constantly smiling and peaceable in the face of mistreatment. Anger expressed appropriately is legitimate and necessary. Second, outrage is the right response to gross injustice. Change doesn't come when people are merely perturbed or "saddened" by evil.
It should go without saying that black people should be able to express anger, fury, even rage without the assumption that it's going to end in disaster. Black people have shown a remarkable amount of restraint over the generations and I don't expect that will change.
So while it might get uncomfortably hot for a little while, my encouragement to my white friends is this: When it comes to black anger:
Let it burn.
(You'll be alright. I promise.)
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