Sometimes you just have to get mad enough

I have often entertained the idea of writing a book. I have written articles and chapters. I have a collaborative book in the works on a stellar psychotherapy tool and self-help method. I have written extensively in my own and others' yahoo groups, google groups, grouplists, and social media. People seem to like what I write. I once met someone for the first time in a training I attended who said that, over the course of several years, she collected ALL of my emails posted to an unrelated yahoo group we both belonged to. She said she referred back to those email commentaries often. I was shocked.

I remember attending a workshop with the well-known spiritual practitioner and writer Stephen Levine, author of Who Dies?, Healing into Life and Death, and Gradual Awakening. I was quite active participating in the workshop and expressed myself several times during the weekend . When the workshop ended, I walked up to thank them for a great experience. Separately, they each asked me when I was going to write my book. I had never mentioned wanting to write a book. I felt taken aback by the sincere compliments and also, somehow, I also felt ashamed. Why wasn't I writing a book?

Unbeknownst to Stephen and Ondrea Levine, every time I started writing for a book or big article, it came off dry, boring, overly wordy, and self-involved. Ideas went on forever, never getting to the point, and I would eventually give up. But when I was writing to a person or people, somehow that was different: I was engaged, focused, wanting to deliver my thoughts so they would truly understand them. I thought more recently (years ago now) that a blog might be what I needed. So now I am writing to you. No, not him or her: YOU.

In priority order, my primary interests since my late 20s (I'm now 59) have been spirituality, followed by the healing arts, followed by psychotherapy, followed by teaching people how to help people. So I thought to start a blog on a mystic's musings on spirituality a few years ago. It was a one-post venture. there was no steam to keep me doing it. I stopped. I still have a twitter page. I only occasionally update it..

I considered --even planned-- to write about healing, about psychotherapy, but those ideas never even made it out of the starting blocks. I have facebook professional pages, websites, and a newsletter I took on board for a method I teach to help me help people; to deliver services and educate, but I struggle to keep them current.

Sometimes, you just have to get mad enough to take action. I have posted on social media about racism many times. Most of my facebook friends are white. Hell, most of my FRIENDS are white, because I grew up from a toddler in a nearly all-white neighborhood. In my posts about racism, I felt like I could offer a perspective they could grasp from a person they trusted. Inevitably, spirited comments would ensue. Some fbfs unfriended me; others seemed to just retrench in their denial out of discomfort; rationalizing, intellectualizing and "whitesplaining," but we did not ditch each other. Yet. And there was also a lot of affirmation from likeminded and progressive friends, which is lovely. But of course I wasn't really changing anyone's mind either. Or so I thought.

There were a few (one would have been enough) who let me know that, beyond enjoying my posts, what i had to say MADE THEM THINK and SEE THINGS THEY HAD NOT SEEN BEFORE or at least SEE THE SAME THINGS FROM A FRESH PERSPECTIVE. That hit home. It meant to me that I have a mind and voice worth listening to, that people are LISTENING and OPENING to what I have to say, not just debating with me. It means there is an opportunity and responsibility to express certain of these thoughts and feelings outside of the fishbowl of selective relationships and my somewhat parochial social media and grouplist communities. SO here I am: unvarnished. Just a fellow human being. Not a mystic. Not a healer. Not a therapist, and not a teacher or trainer. Just me.

To explain how I ended up finally mobilizing myself to take this particular course of action, all I can say is that I got angry. I had believed that I had transcended the "bad temper" I had as a child. Now, upon reflection, I can't consider the profound stuttering problem I had throughout grade school as separate from my frequent loss of temper, and my playing with fire at home. Not expressing yourself and not being heard have consequences. But something must have gone right, because the stuttering, temper tantrums and fire fascination all left at the same time. That is a story for another blogpost.

So yeah, I got angry. Angry at the parade of excuses and delusional beliefs at work behind political racism. Angry at the clearly obvious backlash served up to African Americans for having the "audacity of hope" for true equality and change now that an African American had been elected (twice) to the highest office in my country. Angry at being serially overlooked, undervalued; utilized but not recognized. Angry at my daughter's struggles as a young mixed race chlld. Angry at being told "You're better than this" when I expressed solidarity with BLM "Don't Shoot" photos and angry at the condescending and defensive nature of replies to my highlighting the racist arrogance of that comment.

ANGRY at the continual stream of murders of unarmed black men and boys by police. Angry at murderer ex-cop Derek Chauvin. Angry at accessory-to-murder accomplice ex-cop Thomas Lane. Angry at accessory-to-murder accomplice ex-cop J. Alenxander Kueng, and Angry at accessory-to-murder accomplice ex-cop Tau Thao. ANGRY at all of the murdering cops, ex-cops, and vigilantes who killed and mamed and continue to kill and mame unarmed black men and boys who did nothing wrong, or for a non-violent crime, or who are suspected of a misdemeanor, or who are not obviously commiting any crime at all but who "fit the description (we all seem to)," or because they ARE armed and legally carrying a concealed firearm when you pulled them over for a broken tail light (only white people are allowed to do that, even if it is to go visit a black church and slaughter the parishoners).

ANGRY at the law enforcement, judicial, legislative, and executive cultures and institutions that train, socialize, corrupt and protect these people from justice if they can get away with doing so. ANGRY because 99% of the time these institutions will probably continue to succeed unless a smartphone video is monitoring the perpetrators and makes it to youtube.

Angry because I run out of words and wind trying to explain to and argue with someone about what is so blatantly obvious to me that s/he just does not want to see. Angry from the fresh perspective with which I am re-experiencing the racist events in my life and from recontextualizing the events in my family members' lives, appreciating at a new depth of understanding I didn't previously have that racism was at the root of much of my life's (and their lives') pain. Beware the "well-spoken" and angry nigger.

To me, in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, the first adjective is as offensive as the grammatical object "nigger" (Don't be afraid of the "n" word, white readers: it won't hurt YOU unless you try to use it (it is no longer yours to use unless you've decided to embrace racism), and don't you dare be offended that I used it. I had to EARN using it, so chill. I want you to see and feel how all the shit we put up with from society is just like that word is being whispered down at us from on high. All the time. Every goddamn day.

"Well-spoken" is the gentle insult to the intelligence and articulateness of an African American girl, boy, woman or man by a racist mind. The color of the skin that mind possesses is irrelevant, because the condescension comes from white racist society, no matter who uses the term. It is mockery disguised as a compliment. It means "You pretend to be intelligent(white) really well, I can barely tell you are black." Even if you are a well-meaning white (or black or brown) person who says it without understanding what it means, it does not change what it means when you say it about a black person. When it is used to refer to us, we know precisely what you are saying, even if you don't.

So WHY ON EARTH would I name my blog this? To insult myself? Not at all. It is to do three things: to keep me angry enough to keep needing to express my thoughts and emotions about the past, present and anticipated future of living with racism; to help you start to try to see through my eyes, understand my mind, sense with my gut, and feel with my heart the world you thought you understood; and to help me transform what it means to me when I say it about myself right here, right now.

The consequences of me NOT writing this blog would mean for me to deny my anger, either by means of conscious suppression or subconscious repression. When I look back at my childhood, my "bad temper," profound stuttering problem throughout grade school, and my loving to play with matches, I now see only one thing: bottled-up rage choking my voice, spilling out into temper tantrums, and expressing itself in an incendiary fascination I could not control. And not just my rage: the same rage (and grief) that I believe helped make my father an alcoholic; the same rage (and guilt) that I suspect led to my mother's multiple sclerosis; the same rage that tipped my brother's and my sister's vulnerabilities into fullblown mental breakdowns; the same rage that probably manifested one brother's terminal lung cancer and contributed to yet another brother's death from the consequences of pulmonary fibrosis. Unexpressed rage is toxic and deadly. It can also be energizing if directed constructively. I am trying.

Well-spoken. If you read and consider carefully, you will find more than articulate speech here: you will receive a message. Well-spoken. If you pay attention, you will recognize yourself on one side or the other of racism, and maybe both. And if you notice the side you find yourself on continually changing, that means you are paying attention. Well-spoken. What I have to say is far more important than whatever pretty words I muster to say it.

Well-spoken. I don't need a white history lecture to see the big picture, the deep picture, or the true picture. I live in a world with features you are mostly blind to, even though I am one of the luckiest of black people on Earth: I make a good living. I have multiple skills and talents. I am exceptionally intelligent by white society's standards. At 59 years of age, I have never been shot or stabbed; I have never been arrested OR brutalized by police. Nor have I ever been incarcerated. For a black man in America, I have won the Power Ball. And yet...

The "well" of this "well-spoken" is the bottom of the well from which my wounded, yet indomitably beautiful soul is seeking to heal through speaking out. We each have a wounded, yet indomitably beautiful soul. This one is speaking. Thank you for listening.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=well%20spoken

#Racism #antiracist #thenewjimcrow #policebrutality #massincarceration #blacklivesmatter