The uses of anger

October 6, 2018

     In the last week, as we have watched displays of anger on all sides, we have once again been reminded, in ways too painful to contemplate, whose anger is deemed worthy of respect and response, and whose anger is belittled and dismissed.

    We had Kavanaugh’s red-faced tirade, his face contorted with rage at the thought that a woman might hold him to account for his behavior and keep him from his gilded perch on our nation’s highest court.  Kavanaugh’s entitled tantrum was so disturbing that it prompted former Supreme Court Justice Stevens to state that it disqualified him from a seat on the Supreme Court (Source: “Kavanaugh does not belong on the Supreme Court, retired Justice Stevens says,” Reuters.com, 10/5/18).

     When it became evident that a Kavanaugh’s spittle flicking truculence was having the opposite effect on Senate Republicans, women responded with righteous rage of our own.  Thousands of women flooded the Capitol, filling the galleries of the Hart Senate building and barging into the offices of Senators Collins and Manchin, demanding that the Senators listen to their stories of assault.  The response from those we elect to represent us and whose salaries we pay with our tax dollars was to ignore those of us they weren’t having arrested.

    Orrin Hatch waved protesters away, testily admonishing them to “grow up,” as if mobilizing to petition our representatives on a critically important lifetime appointment wasn’t the most adult thing that we could do.  To the contrary, it was the grumpy old men of the Senate who were demanding that we allow Kavanaugh to exist in a state of perpetual adolescence—where attempted rape and exposing himself at 17 and 18 could be dismissed as youthful hijinks and an unprofessional temper tantrum promising partisan revenge at 53 could be excused as the understandable fury of the wrongly accused.

     Please!  Tell that to the thousands of Black young people imprisoned for crimes that white people are not even arrested for (Source:  “Criminal Justice Fact Sheet,” NAACP.org).  Tell that to the thousands of young Black people languishing in jail for months awaiting trial because they can’t afford bail (Source:  “In The Name of Public Safety,” by Jocelyn Simonson, Bostonreview.net, 10/2/18).

     Tell that to Black women whose centuries of righteous anger at the double barreled assaults of racism and sexism has been reduced to the trope of the “angry Black woman” and treated as a threat to be eliminated.  We need look no further than Sandra Bland, who paid for her justifiable anger at being stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation with her life. Black women have known for decades what many other women are just learning — that our anger, no matter how legitimate, is a threat to the status quo and that privileged, old, straight white men will fight to maintain their iron grip on power at all costs.

       Does that realization require us to swallow our anger and give in to despair?  Does it mean that our only recourse is to keep protesting and filling the D.C. jails in hopes that Senators will finally relent?  To the contrary, we must use our incandescent rage as fuel. Follow the example of the intrepid Black women mobilizing across the Deep South to elect Democratic governors, Congresspeople and Senators. Go to sleep every night dreaming of wiping that smug smile off of Mitch McConnell’s face and spend every one of the next 30 days doing the work to make that dream come true.

#OrganizelikeBlackwomen

#Swingleft

#crowdpac

#StaceyAbrams

#AndrewGillum

#BetoforTexas