Anger, Rage, Hatred Are Killing Us All

Recently, I spent several days with a cherished friend, a journalist pal I rarely see. We chatted, as girlfriends do, about our men, children, jobs, movies we’ve seen.

But mostly we talked about racism - in places we’ve worked, people we’ve met.

Although many blacks are obsessed with racism, my friend - who says she has lost count of the white strangers who have screamed the ugliest of racial epithets at her - seems particularly haunted.

In time, our analysis became so detailed, minute and heated that the notion of racism grew from an irritant to a problem to a planet unto itself, vast and unconquerable. And I found myself nursing my most excruciating headache in a year.

Let’s talk about anger. Let’s scream, stamp our feet, shout to the heavens about it because anger is so hot, so cool, that everybody - women, white men, immigrants, gays, true believers of every sort - is into it.

Especially black people. Who better to rage than those who were brought here in chains and who, every moment since, have seen signs that some people would love seeing us back in them?

But recent events - from the growing militia movement to defenders of the alleged Unabomber to the increasing number of torched black churches - suggest everyone’s anger feels justified. If anger is indeed healthy, Americans must be the healthiest beings in the universe.

So why does our world feel so … unlivable?

Because our national love affair with hate doesn’t sustain us. Because we can eat, sleep and breathe rage, but it won’t nourish us. Because - as my pounding head proved - anger can bash its owner as hard as whomever it’s aimed at.

Some people, perhaps, feel energized by rage. But after its initial rush, I feel depleted, embittered and surprisingly helpless. In my experience, anger depletes. Joy fills and inspires.

But anger is what we’re living on. And we all need a rest - especially black people.

On some level, our perfectly reasonable rage is killing us. No group on Earth is angrier than black men - which explains why they die younger than everybody else in the United States. Nobody can tell me blacks’ comparatively short life expectancy is due solely to our consumption of fat, salt, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol.

Even more than racism, the rage we consume is the killer.

But questioning our anger, putting it aside even momentarily, suggests wearing blinders to injustice. Yet, some blacks’ vision is so drenched in anger that they see African-Americans who are not perpetually outraged as traitors or fools.

A recent Newsweek magazine article about “Waiting to Exhale” author Terry McMillan stated that her “lack of racial polemic” - read: “refusal to constantly rail against white folks” - disturbs certain blacks. One suggested that McMillan’s success tells aspiring black writers to stop writing race-centered literature. “But race,” the critic said, “is central to a black person’s experience.”

It damned sure is. It just isn’t our only experience.

Or is it? I asked a friend, a fiftyish black activist whose smooth dealings with whites betray outrage, about the fury. “The thing about anger is that you have to find someplace to put it,” he said.

“The people who control things characterize angry reactions by blacks as irrational,” he said. “So you try to be strategic, ask yourself how angry you should be at any given moment because you’re angry about so many things - because (racism) shows itself all the time.”

Yet often, he continued, “hauling off and kicking somebody in the butt is the only thing that gets any result.”

Even though it can turn on us.

Could he ever just let the anger go?

Impossible. “It’s the only me I know - anger defined me as a child,” he said slowly. “This is how I was made.

“I’d have to unmake myself and start over.”

Thinking that young African-Americans might be different, I asked my niece, 14, what makes her mad.

“People,” she said. “Whenever you get mad, it’s at something they’ve done.”

Well, yes. People make you crazy, like my beloved, headache-inducing pal.

Her solution: moving to Africa because “I just can’t stand it here anymore.”

Fine. But what about those of us who stay, steeped in the anger? What do we do in a place where the statements “Black folks’ anger is killing them” and “Black folks aren’t angry enough” both are true?

Find a larger truth: If we can’t find something to love about one another, black and white and every other shade, we’re not going to make it.

Impossible? Somehow, we must unmake ourselves. And start over.

xxxx