IBARW 2: On anger

[oyceter]

This is a post for Intl. Blog Against Racism Week.

My terms, definitions, and disclaimers

It's odd to be posting this right now; I've finally gotten more than five hours of sleep and so am obnoxiously peppy and optimistic.

I've read the following posts/articles lately, which have all tangled together in my head in a giant mess: Zee on tone, zvi on tone and educating, workplace anger and gender, the "gotcha" game, and jlh's question: "But sometimes I wonder, does that lead to added responsibility for me? I'm so used to 'educating' people about race, but is that my job, because so many of my friends are white?" I've also been going through old emails when rachelmanija, coffeeandink, minnow1212, liviapenn, rilina and I decided to do IBARW last year in an attempt to write up another IBARW post, and what gets to me (and I think the others as well, though of course I don't speak for them) is how conciliatory we sound.

The tangly mess in my brain goes something like: Anger makes people not listen to me. I want to be listened to, particularly when I speak about things that are important to me. Therefore I should not sound angry. But. I am a woman, and when I get angry, people listen to me even less. I am Chinese, and when I get angry, people listen to me even less. I look young, so people listen to me even less (I get mistaken for a student a lot). Talking about racism makes people uncomfortable, and people get angry easier, and listen to me even less.

And I think about it more (or I don't), and I think: That makes me really fucking angry!

Mitsuye Yamada puts it better than me: "Their anger made me angry [...] I didn't expect their anger." (link to rilina's reaction to the quote, though I highly recommend both Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Togther? (where the excerpt is from) and This Bridge Called My Back (where the essay was originally published).

gaudior has some excellent points about anger and people listening, and she is not at all arguing that people should not be angry -- admittedly, I had to reread several times because of my kneejerk reaction, but she clearly says that the anger is not helpful when it comes to educating, assuming that educating is the goal. And jlh has further good points about educating and the burden of responsibility, as does witchqueen.

And so, I am left in a conundrum. And I think about Frank H. Wu's introduction to Yellow, in which he introduces himself as a professional Asian-American; he is called on as the Asian-American voice in issues of race, he is known for his stances and statements on race, and he is an Asian-American activist. There's a sense of regret when he writes this, along with a sense of pride.

This is when I look at my own LJ. I know a lot of people are reading me now for posts on race, and I thank you for that. And I know many people came for commentary on fannish things, books and manga, and found the race posts interesting as well, and I am grateful for that. I don't think I am a Professional Chinese-American-from-Taiwan-TCK Person; LJ makes it easier for me to be all things and not just one thing. Also, I can't not talk about being Chinese, being from Taiwan, being a TCK, having grown up abroad. It's part of who I am, just like part of who I am is a woman who lives in California and has rats and swing dances and loves food and loves books beyond almost all else.

jlh's question also poses a twister: I don't think any POC should be responsible for educating anyone else on race and racism, not when there is so much already on our shoulders, not when we're going to get asked anyway. And one of the cool things about this IBARW is seeing people educate themselves; heck, I have learned a ton just from two and a half days of posts.

But for me, personally... I do feel responsible for educating. Not because I am Chinese, but because I am human, because I used to be too silent, because I have been complicit in this system as well. I wrote last year for IBARW on speaking out, and I continue to stand behind that. I continue to feel guilt about being silent, but I believe the answer to guilt is not to sit and feel guilty, but to do something to make things better. Blogging is a small thing in the scope of things, but it is still a thing, and it is a small thing that is getting me to do more things.

I didn't actually mean to talk about educating, but just to state why not educating isn't an option for me. And yet, educating is tiring, and I don't always want to be the teacher. One of my sneaky sekrit reasons for organizing IBARW this year is so everyone will be talking, so I don't have to talk as much! (It is all part of my master plan for world domination.) Seriously, though: the more people talk about all aspects of racism, the less problematic it is when one conversation gets derailed, because there are a million more going on.

But really, what I wanted to talk about was anger.

gaudior is right; anger makes people less willing to listen. And as you can all tell, I want people to listen to me. It is hard admitting to that, given the combination of the pressure both to be a quiet woman and a quiet Chinese person, and it is even harder admitting that I have something to say.

And yet.

To be listened to, I have to give away my anger. And not only that, even if I don't act or sound angry, even if I make every effort to sound calm and reasonable, people will still comment on my tone because I talk about race, because I am female, and because I am Chinese. I reread last year's posts on the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM and there were times my hands were shaking because I was so angry, and still, I nearly bent over backwards to not give offense to anyone. And look how that turned out.

"Why are you so angry?" I've been asked. And my question back is: "Why aren't you?"

I thought ap_racism and deadbrowalking were "too angry" and "too hostile" and "too bitter" when I first found them. Looking now, looking at all the things talked about there, all the tiny racist incidences that shred away your humanity, little by little, I wonder why people aren't more angry. Sometimes I'm not angry when I come across these things; it's just shake your head and move on, business as usual, and a cynical laugh, and that makes me sadder than the anger does, because I need to care.

Also, holding on to my anger is a bit of a "Fuck you!" to the world, just like my wearing pink and girly skirts and frippy clothes is. So you're going to use these things to define me? Go ahead and try. And yet, of course I'm aware of how problematic it is, how maybe people will listen to me because I look small and feminine without realizing that I am angry as hell inside; how maybe people will overlook me as being soft-spoken, given what I wear and my Asian-ness; how maybe some people who might have listened to me end up going away because I am too angry; or how maybe people will listen to me because I'm not "scary and black."

These are the Catch-22's that partially define and delineate my life -- not all of my life, but some of it.

So hi. I am here, and I am angry as hell, and sometimes I will be constructive and educating, and sometimes I will be incoherently rageful. And that second part should not be something I have to hide, particularly given how so many systems try to take it away already.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Fabulous post!!! I definitely agree that there's a race & gender aspect to how anger is received. And in how we feel when we ourselves get angry.

And well-mannered discussions generally go further than flamewars. But still... yes, why AREN'T other people angry? And why is "why are you so angry?" such a common way to invalidate someone's point? Why isn't it okay to be angry? Visibly so, audibly so, during an argument? Blah blah blah ad nauseum--anyway, thank you for this post.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

You rock.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I had trouble reading gaudior's post too, for many of the same reasons. I agree with you that her point is very valid (and well-put), but anger isn't something we can give up entirely. And when people tell me, "Your anger isn't constructive," part of me wants to respond, "You have the privilege of being able to give up your anger without feeling like you're giving up your voice."

(For obvious reasons, I'm not the best judge of how I come across on LJ. I know that in other parts of my life, people who don't know me very well see me as quiet and demure, and people who know me better see me as confrontational, opinionated, and sarcastic. I tend to think I should be angrier on my journal than I am. Maybe I am wrong.)

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

It is certainly not your or any POC's responsibility to educate white folks on issues of race and racism. Nevertheless, I am extremely appreciative that you take the time to do so. I've found your writing very educational indeed, and it's helped to inspire me to educate myself. So, thank you.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

hi--here, and listening, and thank you for the post, and...gah. I'm sorry that your anger gets turned into a weapon against you.

[jennifergearing.livejournal.com]

Yes. So much yes with this post. I'm less overlooked because of my Asianess by people I've just met/encountered in person, because I take a lot of features from my white father, but I've had people I know crack jokes about me being 'angry Dragon Lady' and running after people with a cleaver (a cleaver, ffs, and the fracking dog thing. it makes me angry thinking about it even now, and i was friends with these people -_-)

And y'know, people are multitudes. This idea that we function same way every time; react same way every time, I find it weird. We're not machines, our 'programming', to the extent that the analogy works, has loopholes. Some would say it's flawed, I don't think it is. We're emotional beings, and holding ourselves to emotionless standards is really odd, to me, particularly when we're trying to deal with the stuff that, as you say, shreds away our humanity, piece by piece.

And I keep seeing a sense of entitlement from some folk that's like "oh sure, you can be angry sometimes" but still expecting that they're so important that we will set aside our rage for them. Because they're special or something.

I feel like I'm repeating stuff other people have already said elsewhere at other times, but that's sometimes how it is, because we spend so much time repeating ourselves, because people aren't listening. They're hearing what they want. Tone isn't just about how we sound, it's about how people hear us. Which is why bending over backwards to be polite can only do so much, because up to half of the 'tone problem' isn't about what we do.

I think I'm rambled enough .. Yes. Thankyou. And now that my brain has somewhat recovered from this flu, I might actually get around to posting for IBARW.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Something that I noticed about being angry over injustices a long time ago: if a woman is angry about some form of injustice that does not affect her directly, that's considered a good thing and she may very well be listened too. If she was angry about something that affected her directly, that's when she was most likely to be ignored or dismissed.

Women were encouraged to express anger in the mid-19th century, during the anti-slavery movement. Women were encouraged against to express anger during the anti-war protests in the 60s and 70s. Everyone devoted to those causes was expressing anger, and it did make a difference. In each case, it was when women began to express anger over their own situation that they were told that being angry would get them nowhere, because people don't listen to anger. And yet, many women continued to express anger, and while there is still a long way to go, still, a lot has been accomplished through anger.

I believe that there's a similar dynamic at work when other people who are the objects of institutionalised oppression speak up for themselves, in their own interests, with righteous anger.

It is my belief that anger is important, that anger should not be set aside. It is my belief that it should be harnessed, used to fire the spirit and support the body while you fight, even while it is controlled and channelled so that it feeds the message rather than rendering it incoherent. It seems to me that anger is how people respond then they are hurt, injured, mistreated, betrayed, belittled, excluded, done an injustice. And yes, people who think of themselves as good people may get upset if you tell them by your righteous anger that they have at the very least benefited and been complicit in such things, and very likely more than that. But that's our problem (speaking for myself as a white person).

Because people in power, people with white privilege - are, for the most part, not going to give up, or share, power and access, or let go of all the apparatus of lies and mystifications and covertly racist policies and all that shit that keeps us comfortable and unaware just because someone makes calm and logical arguments and appeals. Because we can come up with just as many calm and logical arguments why it can't be done, at least right now, or why it wouldn't be right or fair or proper, or it would harm something important like the economy or national security or making whites feel good about ourselves, and all the other bullshit arguments. We have a million of them.

Most of us will not really be moved until we see and feel the anger of those we have oppressed, and understand it, and its consequences, in our gut. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

The problem with anger as a rhetorical motivation is that centuries of Western rationalism have cast strong emotion as a form of hysteria, especially when women are angry. When I was writing my dissertation about chronic fatigue syndrome support groups, I analyzed the problem of anger when used by activists. The case of CFS is a good example. A lot of doctors and researchers have considered it to be a psychosomatic condition over the years, even though patients insisted it was biological, something the research is now bearing out. But because the medical establishment was predisposed to see it as a psychosomatic condition of primarily women, people with CFS were characterized as hysterical, even more so the more they protested the psychosomatic label. In effect, "if you're angry about being called hysterical, then that only goes to prove that you are hysterical." A catch-22 that allows the establishment to contain and compartmentalize the anger being communicated by an activist group.

When Audre Lord, and Helene Cixous as well, talk about not using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, they're talking about using anger instead of rationalism in order to confront rationalism. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that point of view because it makes rational thought the province of only one group of people, rather than a trait that happens to be highly valued by that group of people but possessed by all. I also think it's possible to be both rational and angry.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I am all for anger. Especially your anger. It's been such a thing, watching you become so focussed and active over the past year or so. Anger is awesome.

(And can be terrifying, both to the person experiencing it and to the witnesses, but any display of power has the potential to be terrifying.)

Sometimes what it takes is conciliatory niceness, but a cattle prod has its place in the discussion too. (Not just for your venting; sometimes, when you lose your shit, it's over something I hadn't noticed, and probably wouldn't have noticed, except it got you so bothered.) I endorse your right to be all over the spectrum between conciliation and 10,000 volts, as you feel is needed.

[kate_nepveu]

I'm still working on finding my anger and expressing it, and I recognize these tensions. Thank you for saying the other side of one of my posts of yesterday better than I could--I had a reason for it, but I felt the tension at the time and I'm glad to be able to point to this.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

:points upward: Yes.

[shati.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I have been thinking about anger a lot lately -- because my instinctive reaction to anyone's anger, including my own, is to hide from it (until it goes away!). And if you're a kid around adults with bad tempers, that's a good instinct, but when you're an adult around people who are angry at systematic injustices, it's really not. It's something I'm working on -- learning to listen to anger as well as to patience. Because it's true that anger will make some people want to listen less, but in situations like this the onus shouldn't be on the speaker to hide her feelings.

I remember being amazed at how not-angry you came across during the TGCADoD, when I was furious. I cannot imagine the strain it must have been, and still be.

[seajules]

Thank you for talking about all of this.

[peneli.livejournal.com]

"because my instinctive reaction to anyone's anger, including my own, is to hide from it (until it goes away!). And if you're a kid around adults with bad tempers, that's a good instinct, but when you're an adult around people who are angry at systematic injustices, it's really not."

This is something I struggle with a lot. Not only do I try to hide from it, if I can't hide I get insanely calm. I become made of ice and marble so their anger can't touch me.

[peneli.livejournal.com]

here via matociquala

"So hi. I am here, and I am angry as hell, and sometimes I will be constructive and educating, and sometimes I will be incoherently rageful. And that second part should not be something I have to hide, particularly given how so many systems try to take it away already."

Amen

[dsthenes.livejournal.com]

IMHO, you cannot educate people, you can only help them learn. And, above all, that's why it's not your responsibility. People evolve and change in their own sweet (or unsweet) time, because genuine attitudinal change comes from within, not from without. And it's something that can take a lifetime to occur. (I sound like a fucking hippy...)

And you're perfectly correct: anger is an impedance to listening. And really listening to what someone is saying is something most people suck at to start with. Add a dose of anger, and you may as well be talking to a brick wall.

D.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

When Audre Lord, and Helene Cixous as well, talk about not using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, they're talking about using anger instead of rationalism in order to confront rationalism.

This is incorrect. Or rather, it may be correct for Cixous, whom I haven't read recently, but in her essay, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Lorde specifically is addressing racism in the women's movement and specifically identifies racism, classism, and heterosexism as the master's tools she means.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

You're right. I was conflating Cixous and Lorde, who were using the same metaphor. It was Cixous who saw rationalism as the master's tool.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I know how to not be angry.

I've put off writing anything for IBARW so far because I can't think of anything that won't work me up into a rage.

And recently several people have told me that they find me intimidating because I argued with them in a seminar. Apparently being tall, black and 'angry' = intimidating. I don't think they actually thought I'd try to beat them into submission, so I don't know what's going on there.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

I used to think that being angry prevented people from listening.

Now I think that being angry sometimes prevents people from listening. But sometimes it's the only message you can't ignore. It's like pain, really. Pain serves a function. There are lots of times when you're pretty sure something is wrong but ehhh you don't want to go to the doctor because it's expensive & a pain in the ass & etc. But when something hurts like a motherfucker you GO because you want it to STOP.

In the same way I find that when people calmly explain their problems, well, you make the decision whether to listen to them or not. But when someone is screaming at you and spraying spittle in your face you PAY ATTENTION. Sometimes it takes that to get people to realize there's a problem. I think there's a lot of people right now thinking about race in fandom that might have ignored it forever if FOC had quietly talked about what they didn't like. Instead we've had huge kerfuffle, drama, the ongoing race drama of people yelling at each other - and FOW (fans of whiteness) have been talking about the fact that race is a factor in how people produce and perceive media to a degree that I personally have never seen before. It's very cool.

I think the difference may be in numbers. One person screaming is a lone lunatic. The entire FOCing Cabal screaming is a force to be noticed. As in many things, sisterhood is powerful.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I’ve been coming to the opposite realization: my usual ingrained instinct (and, certainly, where I was last year) is to say, "Oh no, anger won’t be rhetorically effective, speak carefully," and while this may sometimes be true, I think sometimes that’s my own fear of anger--my own and others’--speaking. Because anger has worked on me: there have been times when other people’s anger has startled me into truth, where other people’s rage has made me realize that I can’t continue dithering over something, trying to weigh all the options; that the matter is exigent and visceral.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

>And when people tell me, "Your anger isn't constructive," part of me wants to respond, "You have the privilege of being able to give up your anger without feeling like you're giving up your voice."

There's also the part where, I think, a speaker isn't required to always be constructive. Sometimes you need to be angry for its own sake, and that or something connected to it is your goal, and no, it's not constructive, but so what? It wasn't meant to be.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

Thank you for this wonderful post. So much of this is stuff that I've been struggling with myself for years. The education thing, because I've got that classic pedantic-geek streak in my personality that hates seeing inaccuries or ignorance put forth without making some effort to correct it; because I want to talk about things that are important to me, but so many of my friends just don't have the cultural background for those conversations to make sense unless I do a lot of explaining along the way; because I love to learn myself, so if someone politely, respectfully, asks me to teach, I have a hard time saying no...

...but as you note, that's TIRING. Sometimes I don't have the energy, sometimes I'm not in the mood, sometimes I just wish I could talk about things without having to backtrack and explain all the jokes and references! And sometimes people just expect you to be the spokeswoman for your entire culture; or they have a sense of entitlement that OF COURSE you can't possibly have anything better to do than answer ALL of their questions, no matter how insensitive; or they have the gall to make pronouncements on my identity if my attitude or politics or appearance don't comfortably reinforce their own stereotypes...

...which leads right back around to anger, of course. And that's an even bigger bucket of worms, I've been struggling since my teen years to learn how to reclaim my anger. For many of the same reasons you list -- not wanting to give people another excuse to dismiss my words and feelings along with being small and female and youthful-looking, not wanting to be written off unheard as shrill or hysterical, struggling with the cultural programming that it's not Ladylike to flip out and shout and cuss publicly. And then on top of that, there was the unspoken lesson of my childhood, that expressing any negative emotion (anger, or sadness, or really anything other than a bland, cheerfully dutiful good-girl mask) could provoke my mother's rages or crying jags, so bottling things up is the only way to be safe. So even now, if I'm in the middle of a heated debate, it's HARD to measure how much anger to express, and how -- if I grit my teeth until my jaws hurt but manage to maintain a cool tone, is it a functional choice, because the message I am trying to put across is more important at the time than expressing my feelings about it? Is it a matter of perception, wanting to look like I'm maintaining the high ground no matter how much I'm seething inside? Is it a matter of control, not wanting to give an opponent the satisfaction of seeing me lose it? ...or is it that childhood programming once again whispering in my ear that nothing good can come of this?

So yeah. Hi. I'm angry all the time too, and sometimes I will try to keep it leashed for the sake of my message, and sometimes I'll take off the limiters and let it out to rampage. And while I may second-guess myself as to whether or not I ultimately took the right approach, I will be damned if I let anyone else decide for me whether or not my anger was "appropriate".

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Great post!

Did you ever read Larry Kramer's "1,112 and Counting" (https://www2.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/05/66488.html)? About a totally different topic (and written by a white male, to boot) but I was reminded of it while reading your post.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I really love this post. I've read this post a couple times now, and will probably come back, and read some more, and think about it some more. I wish I could say something more coherent, but it just makes me really look around at the way I change my speech patterns to make my tone more calm (and uh, when I sometimes spectacularly don't) and how that impacts my own identity, and how I see others doing it, and how I see some of the POC I really care about doing it, and how doing that can sometimes be such a burden, and I just...yes. Very good post. Lots for me to think about. Thank you.