Black Anger
I have been angry since the age of 3 when a little boy shunned my invitation to be friends because he wasn't allowed to play with Black kids. I didn't know I was angry then. My mind had yet to fully grasp the involuntary inheritance of emotion that has proven to be maddeningly troublesome. But, my body responded with the signature furrowed brow and clenched fists that I have come to know intimately as evidence of my anger.
Anger would appear when a white woman shoved me in a grocery store, provoked by the audacity of my childhood blackness. Again, it would come when a boy on the playground asked me why I was so dark. Anger would reappear like a magician when a teacher, after 2 weeks of school, tried to convince my parents I wasn't "that smart". Anger would take an unwelcome encore when another teacher lowered my grades out of concern that I would become prideful and lazy.
There are many other incidences of anger seared in my memory, most of which have nothing to do with the colour of my skin. But there is a special section reserved in my spirit for the anger that accompanies my blackness. It is not the same anger that comes when a driver cuts me off or when the barista gets my order wrong. It is an anger that lingers, playing on as the background music in the drama of the black experience. The music crescendos and decrescendos but it never stops. Even when life is pleasant and relatively uneventful, anger is on standby ready to take center stage. It never knows when it will be needed to protect me from the villains of willful ignorance and hatred. It's no wonder that I sleep with clenched fists.
A therapist might encourage me to explore the emotions behind the anger. She might say that anger is an iceberg peaking to the surface of frigid waters concealing an underbelly of sadness, loneliness, anxiety, or abandonment. But I never learned to swim and I have no interest in doing so now.
Besides, I have made the choice to embrace the caricature of the Angry Black Woman. It fits seamlessly with the other stereotypes that I wear as a pendant around my neck. It's a cultural tradition, turning the relics of oppression into statement pieces of rebellion.
