Something I have found intrinsic to the experience of being socialized as a girl and woman, specifically when you’re a person of color as well, is the ever-present rage we carry inside of us. Everything we do– work, study, run, dance, share a meal with a friend, hold a heating pad to our lower stomachs, fall in love, get sick, cry, rest– is guided by a layer of anger running underneath the experience. I believe I have been angry every day of my life. When one’s body holds pain as an instinct (menstruation, hormonal changes, childbirth), when one’s body is politicized as well as invalidated in that pain, there is no option other than to be guided by a quiet, fueling rage. This rage allows you to remember your worth outside of that assigned to you by capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Audre Lorde acknowledges the ways in which the invalidation and violence from society has fueled a fierce anger in which women of color have grown up: “Women of Color in America have grown up within a symphony of anger at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its service.” (Uses of Anger, 7-8) It is constant, and not only is it a response, but a method of survival.
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I was twelve when things changed.
I was twelve when
He came up to me when
They all looked at me when
I had to make a choice.
I was twelve when
The whole class stared and waited for me to say something when
He said those words to me those violent heinous words when
I felt all of their eyes and I knew I could either
Cry or get mad
So I got mad.
I was twelve when
I cussed him out when
The teacher wasn’t looking when
They were amused by my anger when
At least they weren’t laughing at me anymore.
I was twelve when
Later I broke down in my mother’s arms when
I asked her what those words meant when
I didn’t know their definition but I knew their synonyms when
They meant dirty, gross, object, joke, woman.
I was twelve when
My mom called the teacher when
He got detention when
The boys at school taught me a new synonym when
Now they meant snitch.
I was twelve when I made the choice when
I chose to not be scared or shy when
I chose to be angry when
No one liked me anymore when
Their words couldn’t touch me anymore when
At least I was safe now.
I was twelve when I learned that womanhood was more than pain when
I learned it was violence and shame when
I learned that it meant personal power was nothing when
The men would protect each other when
There wasn’t really a choice after all.
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When gender marginalized people of color respond with anger to prejudice and bigoted behavior, the public labels that anger as unjustifiable and criminal. Too strong of a reaction, or any reaction at all, warrants a punishment. The violence of that punishment ranges from stigmatization to harassment to death, all because of a public criticism of marginalized people’s anger. A common response is along the lines of “It was just a joke. Why can’t you take a joke?” Why are you, the object of my amusement, not amused by my belittling of you? Why are you so angry? The question underneath the question is, what justifies anger? The simple answer is love. Specifically, self-love. I chose to be angry to protect myself, even if it wasn’t the most informed way– I was twelve, and barely had a grasp of my own psychology, let alone that of middle school boys. But I chose anger, as many have done and will continue to do.
Self-love is a precondition for productive anger. When you don’t get something you believe you deserve, anger is the natural response. In the case of the anger of marginalized people, what we deserve– ideally– is respect, safety, and care. It’s love that allows us to use our anger to make change. For productive anger to exist, love has to be underneath it all. Love has to be the foundation of any movement for change. bell hooks echoed this sentiment in her essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom” when she said “I share that belief and the conviction that it is in choosing love, and beginning with love as the ethical foundation for politics, that we are best positioned to transform society in ways that enhance the collective good.” (3) Anger becomes a necessary, productive force for the transformation of society.
But the limitations of anger still play a role in the speed and efficiency at which we can work towards this transformation that hooks alludes to, these limitations being the stigmatizing and accusatory stereotype of the “angry Black woman.” The narrative has always villainized Black women for emoting, especially when that emotion is anger. At the very least, the narrative will protect the perpetrator of violence and prejudice, usually the white man. Black women’s anger continues to be policed and undermined on a broad scale, including behind the closed doors of their own homes: “To my sisters of Color who like me still tremble their rage under harness, or who sometimes question the expression of our rage as useless and disruptive…” (Lorde 5) Yes still, it is useful. Still, it is formative. Still, it is productive.
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What it might feel like
It might feel like decay.
Like there is something in your chest, something growly slowly,
and languidly, taking its time to fill up the space within your ribs.
It might feel like there is something decomposing inside of you,
Something that makes you dread getting out of bed.
It might feel like drowning.
And the overwhelming panic, the fast, fast sinking.
That’s what it might feel like.
Suddenly being in the cold, and only being able to remember the warmth.
Sun rays and the slow prickling of heat, something I could recall, but not re-experience.
The light might stay projected underneath my eyelids without ever touching my skin.
It could feel like something just out of reach.
It might feel like rage. Like slowly recounting the ways in which
you lost yourself and being angry, how did I fall this far?
Being able to remember who you were and who you wanted to be—
I used to care about things I used to laugh I used to—
Being able to honor the memory, to know through your anger that
you will find yourself again, soon.
Your friend tells you she likes this shift;
She’s been listening to quiet tears for so long.
This part where your blood is pumping.
It’s this part, the rageful part, that gives me life.
There’s the part where the loved ones around you
join in your beautiful chorus of anger.
They care for the fallen version of yourself you’re returning to.
I learn my anger’s usefulness to me,
I learn how to focus it with precision,
how to create my own source of energy,
radical, life giving, life saving.
It might feel like a celebration
In which you join together in collective anger and scream and laugh and ground yourself
with the women around you.
What else do you think you can achieve with this? What else can you all do?
It might feel like a sacred process of healing and loving each other.
Like re-learning how to care.
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In order to dissolve systemic issues, in order to enact radical change, anger’s strategy must include collective action and community care, meaning any type of care provided by someone towards other people in their community. Further, community care is a sustainable network of care that prioritizes collective contribution and mutual exchange in order to thrive. Anger on a smaller scale functions well in the process of healing wounds. Interpersonally, rage is helpful. But communally, and then systematically, rage is vital. It is not until the speaker’s community joins in their rage that they begin to truly heal, and celebrate the healing process. It is at this point that one can ask, “What else can I do with this?” and “How can this action of anger become communal?” Communal care as a strategy immediately extends past only the oppressive forces that you experience and reaches other vulnerable people in society, benefiting others through a cultivation of togetherness and mutual support. It acknowledges every person’s ability to participate in a society made for all of us and care for and about each other. Rage must be communal.
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Protest
Remembering the marches
The sun beating down
and the jostling of the crowd
The voice becomes hoarse from chanting
Repeats this message like a spell
steady cadence spreading through the masses
Strong tune against our ears
We are still here.
Remembering our footsteps across the street
landing on murals and chalk drawings
The dust lingers on the bottom of our shoes
stays with us
How must it have felt to touch their
fingers to the ground and spread layers of
paint across the pavement
Getting stuck between the grooves in the asphalt
What it must have meant to bring life
to the same street where
Our grief runs down and puddles.
What else can this be but defiant?
What else can we do but shout
our anger at the sky and have it bounce back towards earth
make sure that someone listens
Our rage is watering the dry land
underneath which
our ancestors are buried.
Where we echo each others’ memory
Where we love those who have left us
where we serve them.
And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.
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To those who have been angry their entire lives, to those who experience anger as an everyday facet of existence, as regular as hunger, anger becomes an interpersonal defense mechanism. But it is when this anger extends and becomes a collective force that it can serve a community. We need each other’s anger to survive and eventually, thrive.