Tools Of Our Emotional Landscape

Anthony, I will try to answer some of your questions. It was about 10 years ago when I was performing as a "guest lecturer" at a local Latino community center called El Centro de la Raza, facing a room of about 15 teenagers almost all of whom could easily have decided to become gang members, that the reality struck me. It's true: I can drive all night across town and never have to worry about getting pulled over by the cops. And if I do get pulled over chances are good that they woun't beat me up. Not true for these kids. They have a different pathway laid out for them and I know it. This is racism I'm talking about. I am a privileged white guy. And they're sitting there in that class room thinking, why am I listening to this? I had to wonder the same thing. And my mind started racing around and I realized that these kids had been told over and over again to stop being so angry, to lighten up and be nice, in short "don't worry, be happy." And I knew that such an instruction would bury them as human beings.

When your father is an unemployed second class citizen who drinks to make himself feel better, when your mother has to clean up after other people's spoiled children, when you yourself have no future that's worth a damn - you might get angry. And you have a right to. Your complaint is legitimate. That's when I developed the anger as a weapon idea. And yes, it's a good idea. I know a semi-homeless woman, a local poet and writer, who cut that part out of an interview that I did and put it over her sink. It means that you matter, that your predicament is a important as anybody else's and that if the system wants to sweep you under the rug you are not going quietly.

You can call it anger, you can call it intent, you can call it anything you like. Just don't say it isn't there or that it has no value or that the victims of a larger force should not have the feelings that they have. Personally I like calling it anger because that's what it is. And remember, anger is like fear - they both exist for a good reason. It was anger and fear both that kept me from going to Vietnam and I'm glad they did.

I maintain that it was constructively educated anger that ended slavery. Child labor. Apartheid. It will free Palestine and get the US out of Iraq. Foolish blind anger is dangerous and messy and that's the kind that everybody always wants to talk about , because if that's where the conversation stays then they can say don't worry be happy. But when you deal with it realistically then people's real feelings have to be allowed and addressed.

And by the way, Soooz makes a comment about "appropriately selecting feelings to match the situation," which is good, but a lot of people don't have that luxury. Their feelings are no less legitimate for being heated and immediate. We as human beings, as members of societies, will never get anywhere until we deal with the realities of all this. If we don't want people to be angry then we have to listen to their complaints and stop making them that way. That's what I think.