In August of 2020, following the summer’s BLM protests, I had a conversation with my mother that would alter my view on issues of race and class forever. Attempting to understand her conviction that poor white families like our own have been left behind by the anti-racist struggle would lead me down a rabbit hole that resulted in my shift towards (and brief radicalization in) Marxist ways of thinking about oppression as a whole. One scholar who I found particularly potent, Adolph Reed, argues that our focus on racial oppression in today’s political climate can potentially alienate those who are victims of oppression outside of racial lines, and that focusing on anti-racist work as a primary goal may not be enough to inspire sufficient change of our systems. I am partial to Reed’s view, largely due to how I have seen it play out in my own life. My mothers conviction is not entirely wrong, and I believe that his concern is a serious one in regards to the uptake of powerful and potent works such as Myisha Cherry’s book, The Case For Rage. If we are to inspire the change necessary to end the oppression of all -or in Cherry’s terms- if we are to aim our rage effectively at injustice, we must at least be wary of the identity politics at play in our modern society.
A Case For Rage
Myisha Cherry’s book, The Case For Rage, makes the argument that expressing our emotions of rage, or anger, when aimed at legitimately unjust actions, systems, and people, is morally justifiable and often necessary in order to correct the injustice. For Cherry and the tradition of philosophers she is drawing from, anger is a useful tool in response to oppression, because what actions and statements are viewed as angry or peaceful are often directly influenced by the oppressive societies in which the people live (6). Showing anger, whether through stern conversation, protest, or all out riot, communicates that the current modes of living are not acceptable for those who are getting angry. This view of anger stands opposed to the traditional philosophical view that tends to dominate our culture, that anger is a disruptive emotion and should be suppressed (11). For Cherry, anger can be disruptive and we should be wary of how we are using it, but that does not mean we should avoid expressing anger entirely.
Her argument for using anger is proposed directly in the context of racial injustice. This is because, for Cherry, “it’s important that we recognize that our oppressions, social positions, and fights are multifarious”, thus it is important that we define the specific (and likely plentiful) objects of our anger, such as race (5-6). I must note here that she does not mean to say that anger about racism is the only case in which anger is justifiable, just that it is the specific case she has set out to define, in the hopes that more cases will follow (27).
Cherry’s distinct view of rage, deemed Lordean Rage, specifically details what ‘just’ anger at anti-racism may look like, and expounds why the use of this specific distinction of rage is valuable for the freedom of all people (25). Named after the Black feminist scholar Audre Lorde, this particular way of approaching rage seeks to avoid exclusive sentiments such as “fighting for our own” by virtue of basing this view on the words of the great poet herself: “‘I am not free while any [other] is unfree’” (24). Cherry seemingly holds the view that anti-racist work, when properly inspired through Lordean Rage, would come to being in the form of “freedom for all”; or in other words, that solving the issue of race would implicitly tear down oppressive barriers for all types of people (24).
This argument for justifiable anger is not something that I object to, I find her argument and the philosophical traditions she is pulling from to be extremely valuable in regards to making moral progress. Emotions help communicate our feelings and motivate us to action, and the emotion of rage is no different (3). Just as love can manifest itself in good and bad ways, anger can as well. We do not avoid expressing love entirely even though there are cases in which emotions of love lead us to do awful things, such as controlling, harassing, and even stalking those close to us. Similarly, we should not avoid expressing emotions of anger just because there are cases in which we may cause physical or emotional harm. When considering oppressive tendencies throughout the history of human society, whether they be distinguished along physical or cultural lines (or both), it appears obvious that rage is a proper response for the many different groups of people who are facing injustice.
Who Needs Rage?
It is certainly the case that Cherry has identified something extremely powerful, that rage can and should be used to fight oppression. However, I worry that centering any case for rage around particular objects — such as race, may risk alienating some groups before they even get the chance to hear the message. I have seen such alienation take place in my own family when discussing race, and it has led me to hold the opinion of marxist scholars such as Adolph Reed; that the issue of class oppression may take precedence over issues of race, particularly in the context of modern American Society (Reed & Michaels 2020). Allow me to explain;
My mother and I were in the midst of one of many arguments about my participation in the BLM protests earlier that year, when she asked me why I would spend my time protesting against racism when white families like ours are struggling too? This question took me aback and, at the time, convinced me that she was long-lost to the white supremist dog-whistles of Fox News and OAN. In line with the stereotype of fragile white guys ‘dipping their toes’ into antiracist work, I completely blew off her question as privileged, responding with some snarky, white-knight-y comment along the lines of “you don’t even know how bad minorities have it”.
This is not the case however, my mother and her family have faced oppression which I could not ignore. My grandfather was orphaned at a young age, due to the fact that his father had been arrested for running moonshine and his mother could not find work in their small christian town that did not approve of women leaving the home. Likely a byproduct of his home life, he and my grandmother dropped out of high school in order to have my mother, divorcing shortly after. My mother grew up in a single-mother household in the same small southern town that had treated her grandmother so poorly, and faced being “the whore’s daughter” everywhere she went until they moved in her teenage years. Even now, my mothers sweet southern draw still garners mocking smirks from the arrogant northerners at my school who somehow believe that the way you talk signifies anything about intelligence.
The experience of my mother’s family, and of all families living in poverty, is one of oppression. While she did not experience any direct discrimination for the way she physically appeared, it is still the case that the conditions under which they lived are untenable and require change. Of course my mother would feel left behind by protests against the mass incarceration, economic suppression, and cultural villainization of black people alone; for she, a poor white woman from the south, had experienced the effects of all these problems too. However, this feeling of being left behind completely prevented her from seeing any merit in the progress made that year; something which was certainly not intended by the BLM protests, but regardless, is cause for concern. Poor white families, like that of my own, should be angry about the oppressive factors that affect both them and minority groups. Thus, in order to do so, an alternative justification for rage ought to be defined, and it may even be up for consideration whether it is fitting for rage to be aimed at race at all.
A New Case For Rage
Marxist scholar, Adolph Reed, and his proponents hold the view that our tendency toward placing race as the center of oppression in politics today is not only alienating to those who may be ignorant (by no fault of their own) to the historical impacts of racism, but further, does not adequately address the scope of most important problems facing minority communities and society at large (Powell 2020). For Reed, “Racism is real and antiracism is both admirable and necessary, but extant racism isn’t what principally produces our inequality and antiracism won’t eliminate it. And because racism is not the principal source of inequality today, antiracism functions more as a misdirection that justifies inequality than a strategy for eliminating it” (Reed & Michaels 2020). His argument, which is quintessentially marxist, is that class, and the issue of rising wealth inequality in the United States, is the issue that is at the core of all continuing inequalities. Thus, when we focus on subjects such as racism as a cure to inequality, we are actually leaving behind other real victims of inequality, like my mother and her family.
The message provided by antiracist discourse, when viewed under the lens of growing class inequality, proves confusing: “What disparity discourse tells us is that, if you have an economy that’s getting more and more unequal, that’s mainly generating jobs that don’t even pay a living wage, the problem we need to solve is not how to reduce that inequality and not how to make those jobs better but how to make sure that they aren’t disproportionately held by black and brown people” (Reed & Michaels 2020). Reed’s concern is that our focus on things such as proportional representation of race across all classes, takes our focus away from the issue that things are only getting better for those on top – regardless of what race they might be. On the bottom, disparities persist along lines of race and sex, due to the very real and lasting effects of racism, however they are not the root of the problem. Reed states: “reality tells us that the extra $1.58 won’t rescue those women from precarity. The men are also being paid starvation wages! In fact, everyone receiving an hourly wage of less than $20 an hour is in a precarious economic position” (Reed & Michaels 2020).
It is obvious that Reed’s concerns heavily echo the experiences of my mother and many of those who oppose the anger of other struggling groups. Despite being angry and having the right to be so, methods of expressing anger over the injustice of poverty are severely lacking in modern discourse. If you are to interpret Reed’s concerns with race strictly, it may be the case that Cherry has done damage to the case for rage at injustice by choosing to focus on race specifically. However, Cherry makes adequate space in her writing for the distinction of other types of just rage, and to strike down her theorizing as entirely improperly focused would seem harsh. Regardless of how you feel about Reed’s concerns, it seems imperative that we at least begin to justify anger on terms outside of race if we are to garner the support needed to address injustice as a whole.
Sources:
nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/adolph-reed-controversy.html
Shared by: Jordan B