This morning I watched a video explaining "triggered anger" and how to control it. What I found unnerving is how the video tried to make anger unnatural.
Anger is a natural emotional response.
Controlling it doesn't mean snuffing it out. On a battlefield, controlled anger is a requirement.
Raising your voice isn't always about being angry either.
Passionate discussions used to be commonplace amongst intellectuals. Dispassionate discussions were the ones you had with people who you didn't like, not the other way around. Passion was not mistaken for anger. Passionate people can be loud. Dispassionate people often aren't.
Reading James Baldwin reminded me of this. He talks about many late night passionate discussions he had with his best friends and other intellectuals in Paris. He loathed that much of that was not allowed in the US.
Not allowed?
We have groomed people we view as lesser to "be quiet" or we, society, will portray it as their fault for being upset at all.
"Too emotional."
But no one will ever say that to an accomplished white man with power. They can be as angry or passionate as they want to be.
Whether at work or in friendly conversations or even on the sermon mound as some of you go listen to white men yell in front of your churches, especially evangelical churches, especially performative Christianity, white men have the lock down on being able to raise their voices, if they want to.
The only exception to this is when they speak with someone "above" their station, their position in society, or the perceived position. A white man yelling at a white police officer is definitely getting that ticket.
We ALL know this hierarchy. "Accomplished" white men can be as loud, as angry, as upset as they want to be. They don't even have to be accomplished, just rich in comparison to who they are talking to. The rest of us are expected to listen.
This hierarchy is enforced by social and societal norms.
Nothing explained this more to me than having multiple black people explain to me "we can't get emotional".
The first time this happened it confused the hell out of me. My "one black friend" as a tween pulled me aside. "Not worth it. We can't get emotional." I took "we" to mean "we women", but in hindsight, I think she meant "we minorities".
The next time I was in the deep south and a friend's auntie pulled me aside and told me it was better not to get emotional with the "white" woman. "It's not worth it," she explained.
I have NEVER been so confused in my life, and I've got some doozies besides this one. Why would defending an elderly old woman not be "worth it"?
It did not register in my mind the woman yelling at the old woman was "white" and the elderly woman was "black". It definitely did not register that to any them, black and white, that I was "white enough". Too ambiguous looking.
Where I had grown up, I was certainly "white enough", so I did not understand. I spent the next decade trying to understand it, reading, observing, even talking with a guy I worked with who was a card carrying klan member "like (his) daddy and (his) daddy's daddy and er'reyone before d'em".
It still did not make sense. Why do "we" need to be quiet? I love a passionate discussion. Great ideas come from passionate minds with differing ideas. Silence begets silence.
Social and societal norms make women tell other women to not get emotional. We are not allowed to be passionate in almost every circumstance.
It's a double whammy for minority women. They get it from all men and all women, while "white enough" women mostly get it from other "whiter" women and "white" men. A minority woman has NO Right to be upset or emotional or yell or even raise her voice.
The saddest part is those that enforce this the most are often the ones that have experienced the most silencing of their feelings and their passions. The abused becomes the abuser.
Minority men still face this also. Circle back a moment to James Baldwin. A black man born in 1924, could have unfettered, passionate debates into the wee hours with his "white" friends in Paris, but not here in the USA for fear of some "white" jackass wanting to force him into containing his passions and his beliefs.
And let's be honest. If he were still alive, he still couldn't.
We've mixed negative connotations to anger and any show of passion for any subject into what is allowed or not allowed for all women and some men.
Social and societal norms teach most of us from a very young age that most emotions are wrong publicly and especially anger and passion for anyone other than "white" men.
Honestly I've only met less than half a dozen "white" men that didn't show their anger whenever they wanted.
(Side note. Yes, I'm aware "white" men, men in general, aren't allowed to show "positive" emotions either. While an interesting tangent, it is an entirely different conversation.)
Being passionate has been forbidden to women and minority men on so many levels. I can simplify down all the scholars, history and social analyses I've read or listened to in one sentence:
Social norms have not allowed women and minority men to express their anger or passion, because both have been reserved for "white" men only in order to maintain a very specific social hierarchy.
Do I have a the fix? The solution? Hahaha. The people I've read and listened to are experts in these fields and they don't know how to fix it.
My only suggestion is stop doing it when you catch yourself doing it. Draw out other people's passion and ideas and bring out your own. It is FAR more complicated than it sounds. But honestly, the best creative meetings i ever led or participated in were where everyone was engaged and "fired up". This is what separates us from the computer and its software. It is what makes us human, and today with so much of humanity being pushed aside, shouldn't we remind ourselves every chance we get how great it is to feel and care and be passionate about something other than ourselves?
Have a fantastic Sunday!! As always, #thinkaboutit #peace
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