Race & anger
Thompson, Cliff
THE LAST WORD RACE & ANGER Cliff Thompson In June 1983, when I was between my sophomore and junior years of college and was in search of summer work, I called a number listed in the newspaper and...
...Being the best teacher, experience ought to strengthen that portion of me that rejects a Nation-of-Islam-style condemnation of white people-because by having practiced that rejection, I would know firsthand its folly and ugliness...
...When one feels choked by it, the natural reaction is to want to do a little choking of one's own...
...For me, and others like me, it hardly seems necessary (or possible) since we are already intellectually aware of its very folly...
...if not acted upon, acknowledged...
...Racism is not merely a guest in American society, it is a permanent resident: one that can be counted on to rekindle rage regularly...
...I don't have the stomach for the first, and my intellect, which provides me with a knowledge of the variety of human attitudes within any given group, won't permit the second...
...It would seem to require modification: either strengthening, so that it can calm me down...
...Two of the writers I most admire, the black essayists Stanley Crouch and Shelby Steele, are quite eloquent in their denunciation of "reverse" racism, yet each admits to having passed through a separatist/black-nationalist phase before reaching a more balanced view of life...
...Neither response, however, fits my own nature...
...Still, anger need not consume me...
...I know there are many African-Americans like me who reject racist generalizations and want to convert their rage into a positive force...
...The bind, then, remains: My intellect stands in the way of my acting in a hostile manner, yet my anger is eternal- as it should be...
...Beyond that, my memory of the exchange becomes fuzzy...
...If it cannot be entirely eliminated, it can be channeled...
...I cannot, and may never be able to, recall that incident without feeling acute shame at my past naivete and also impotent rage at the racism-breathed in like air by all of us each day-that made the incident possible...
...And then I think, with an anger that practically chokes me: This is the world I live in...
...Still, I'm less interested in anger than in how to deal with it...
...So, becoming a separatist might provide me with an apparent quick fix, but I would soon be back where I started, with the added problem of having compromised my principles...
...Assume that a stronger intellect is the better course...
...Besides, my anger-a reaction to racist acts-cannot be forever purged by such a method...
...When he had finished his talk, which was sprinkled with witty asides and self-deprecating humor, the man passed out applications...
...or weakening, so that I can act on my hostile urges...
...Not until I had left the office, without having completed my application, was I struck by why I had been led to do so: Of the dozen or so people seated at the rectangular table, 1 was the only African-American...
...I was about half-way through mine when he summoned me to a separate room...
...But must I experience a similar phase...
...Let us talk to each other: our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and lovers, black and white...
...or, failing that, to label as devils those who have created the situation, and all who look like them...
...Ten or twelve of us, all dressed as if for church, sat at a rectangular table and listened as a trim, smooth-voiced, middle-aged man gave us the lowdown on selling Cutco knives...
...But that is my point...
...I put on my best suit, left my mother's house in Northeast Washington, D.C., and trekked to suburban Maryland, where I discovered that I had come to a group orientation rather than an interview...
...THE LAST WORD RACE & ANGER Cliff Thompson In June 1983, when I was between my sophomore and junior years of college and was in search of summer work, I called a number listed in the newspaper and made an appointment to interview for a sales job...
...In a pleasant tone, he asked me questions based on the part of the application I'd completed...
...What do I do with my feelings...
...I have moments, as I believe every member of a minority group does, when my consciousness rises above the level of daily concerns, career aspirations, etc., when I look at the world not through the lens of fatherhood, husbandhood, or employeehood, but see with an unobstructed view...
...Of course, as an example of racial oppression, the story doesn't rate very high...
...This leaves me in a bind...
...Cliff Thompson is a fiction writer and an associate editor of Current Biography...
...I know he told me something of such an innocuous, inoffensive nature that I not only had trouble remembering it later but failed to question what lay behind it as he spoke...
...and while fighting racism, let us affirm the humanity of all people, lest our own be diminished...
...The key may be my intellect-puzzling in itself, since its argument is too strong to allow me to condemn white people as a group, yet its influence is too weak to prevent that impulse in me...
Vol. 123 • February 1996 • No. 4
