I’m Angry All Of The Time

I dare you to read to the end

I haven’t published anywhere since the death of George Floyd, because I’ve been angry. I didn’t just become angry. I’ve been angry all the time. I’ve been angry since I was a little girl and had to walk an extra two blocks to the store because the direct route from my house to the store was a street where Black people weren’t allowed.

But, anger wasn’t an option. So, I became smart. My intelligence led me into the belly of the beast at an Ivy League university where, once again, white people felt free to express their discontent with my presence. Confederate flags hung in windows, friends were physically attacked, my Black residence hall was regularly threatened with bombs and set on fire strategically during mid-terms and finals.

But, anger wasn’t an option. I had to be employed. A master’s degree at the age of 22 in this Black skin didn’t open a lot of doors. While employed at a psychiatric hospital, the permanence and gravity of disempowerment that came with the color of my skin were affirmed once again.

A white male patient with a diagnosis of “retarded schizophrenia” had a vocabulary less than one hundred words; one of them was “nigger.” Even in his fragile state of mind, he knew he had an asset that made his life more valuable than mine. He let me know that when he yelled the word nigger at me incessantly for an entire 8-hour shift. I shuttered at the profundity that the slightest cognitive capacity would deem me inferior.

By now, I was “too smart and pretty” to be angry. So, I became a teacher. I tried to transform each community I’m in. Amid everyday oppression that Black people have to numb themselves to for survival, anger is never an option. Since the first slave ship crossed the Atlantic, anger has been a death sentence for Black people. Comply or die.

If I had a dollar for every time I stuffed my anger for the comfort of white America just to survive… The death of George Floyd burst an emotional blood vessel. I didn’t’ know what to do or say to my majority of white friends who love me but care nothing about my community.

I could not serve white America my daily dose of behavioral apology to make sure they are comfortable with my distinct articulation and politeness. I couldn’t forget that they voted for Trump, never advocated for diversity in the workplace, and believed telling me they don’t see color is a compliment.

I could not pretend like their everyday living in ignorance of race doesn’t leave breadcrumbs that lead to police violence. I couldn’t be their Black friend that makes them believe that racism no longer exists. I could not pretend I wasn’t angry.

I’m angry that America has failed miserably at every junction to address its past. As long as we continue to lie that America was built on democracy, we deny the oppression of Africans that were brought here as slaves to build this country and the Native Americans that were slaughtered in the process. That is the beginning of the lie of white supremacy. I remain its victim.

Every area of study of human behavior confirms the danger of generational trauma. Psychology, epigenetics, sociology, and human services research support a need for people to address past trauma, no matter how long ago the trauma occurred. To the degree that the trauma is not addressed, it gets passed down genetically or environmentally.

Centuries of the accumulated effect of the disregard for Black life has negatively impacted the way white America engages with Black people. The centering of whiteness has depleted opportunities in the Black community.

The current evidence of the centering of whiteness is white people rushing to learn about Black people in the heat of the night. White supremacy is so normalized that nothing white is questioned. The behavior and history of whiteness are never examined.

Many white people called on Black people to talk about their experience. Instead, the questions should have been about white people. How have white people accumulated their wealth? What is the condition of the countries that white people have colonized? What did white people ever do to repair the relationships with people whose ancestors they once held as slaves?

What would happen if we stopped making the white experience the norm and begin to question it instead? Is this the right way, or just the white way? We can apply that question to every experience instead of continuing to normalize and center whiteness.

I will take a moment here to decenter whiteness myself, and say that I am angry. I am righteously angry. I am angry at the mass and brutal interruption of me trying to build a just world that sees me fully as a community member, not just an individual.

I am angry because I have to live in fear while I tell myself not to. Today was the first morning I didn’t wake with the image of George Floyd, and hearing my husband say “that easily could have been me.” “Be careful” is a customary salutation in the Black family every time someone leaves the house, even to check the mailbox.

I’m angry because my white friends post racist comments on social media and then try to explain to me that they “didn’t mean it that way.” I never see these so-called friends post anything anti-racist, but they have so much to say about the rights of white people. I get tired of deleting people who don’t see my color, but they sure see theirs.

I’m angry because I’m tired of being the only Black person in most of the rooms where important decisions are being made about communities. Having one person of color at the table does not make for equitable discussions or decisions. Once again, it only allows for the illusion of inclusion and the comfort of the white ego.

I’m angry because half of the white people who started reading this article stopped half-way through and expressed their privilege of comfort. They are tired of being exposed to Black pain after only two weeks. Really?

I’m angry for my ancestors, who did precisely as the white slave masters said so that one day, my black ass finally would be able to say, “I’m angry.”

I’m back, and I’m Black.