If you get mad at someone they will get mad at you back. Even if you aren’t mad at them, they tend to get defensive, particularly when the conversation involves deeply personal beliefs. Many believe that anger should be the last thing on your mind when hoping to persuade or productively discuss with someone, but (Lordean) rage is essential to the antiracist movement and anger naturally arises in conversations about justice. But if the goal is to eradicate, or at the very least, substantially diminish the effects of, racially unjust institutions/beliefs/systems, should it be used in such a provocative way?
I suppose it’s worth going through a couple of scenarios, the first being a one-on-one conversation with a peer. Here, the goal is more than likely either persuasion or some sort of mutual agreement. In this case, rage might look something like anger toward a racist comment that the other person said or witnessed with you. Assuming that the other person was at best ambivalent toward the comment and at worst supportive of it, anger might alienate them as your audience. Imagine if you made a joke or comment that you thought harmless and then someone got angry at you and began to attack strongly- and deeply-held personal beliefs of yours that you internalized growing up. It would feel like an attack on your character and who you are as a person, and, to some degree, it would be. A person’s character is largely made up of their personal beliefs and ideas of race and social structure are part of that. Anger that seems (even if it isn’t in actuality) directed towards a person’s character in this way can seem (even if it isn’t) like a personal attack, the easiest and most natural thing to take offense to. Then, when the other person does take it personally, they may start attacking you or shut down against any points you make, leading the conversation to go either nowhere or quite negatively confrontational. Cherry says, rightfully so, that this is due to “the ally’s inability to do the work required to understand the person’s rage” (Cherry 76), but the outcome of this conversation shouldn’t be dependent on the ally’s ability to empathize. If the aim is to help the other person grow towards antiracism, isn’t accomplishing that goal still important even if it isn’t in the most optimal way? Empathy can be worked on in the future; the first step is to get them to understand your side. It isn’t necessarily that you have to withhold or downplay righteous anger to spare the other’s feelings; rather, it’s the simple idea that (strong) rage doesn’t always have a place in a conversation aimed at growth – although some slight anger or angry feelings may not necessarily be a setback, so long as the other person isn’t made to feel belittled.
A larger situation may be in response to some institutional injustice. Perhaps a club at your university is called out for discriminating against people of color or there is a big Title IX violation that isn’t acted upon. Here, I think rage is probably the most useful tool because it “tends towards metabolization and aims for change” (Cherry 5), the goal when struggling against an institution. If given the chance, institutions will negotiate acts of justice to save face and the easiest way to make them feel like this is an option is by not showing anger. Anger demonstrates hurt, passion, and the need for justice. A formal letter of “maybe this wasn’t ok, please change it maybe” will never be nearly as effective as a university-wide protest and angry press releases. Though it’s still provocative, it isn’t personally attacking any one person’s beliefs. Further, anger is what fuels the fire for these protests, articles, and letters to be created; it “provides the eagerness, optimism, and self-belief needed to fight against persistent and powerful racist people and systems” (Cherry 6). So, if there is some sort of institutional injustice, anger is the best way to (a) motivate people to fight against it, (b) act from a place of collective passion and purpose, and (c) motivate change from the institution. Without anger, any action can seem frivolous and insincere. This goes for the general goal of antiracism as well. In protests, lobbying, and nonprofit work, it’s important to recognize the importance of anger in getting your voice heard and your message across.
In essence, anger is a highly powerful tool that can motivate change, unity, and justice when used correctly. However, just because anger is useful doesn’t mean it should always be used, nor does it mean that every use of anger is correct. While I agree with Cherry that an inability to understand someone’s anger towards racial injustice is completely on them and not on the angry person, it’s also unfair to expect someone to change their beliefs after being angrily challenged by someone they disagree with. It’s unfair to have to cover or withhold your anger in order to spare someone else’s feelings, but, in my experience, if you want the conversation to move forward and not become a dead-end fight, it’s necessary to some degree. And it is also completely possible to discuss an injustice without becoming rageful, or even with just a smaller amount of anger that isn’t too provocative. In personal conversations, change requires incentive, and that incentive should be given in a two-way conversation. Too-strong anger simply cannot function the same way in this case. But, in an institutional case, it may be the only thing that will work.

Shared by: Wendy Wei
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