It's okay to be angry that the world is trying to kill us

I woke up angry this morning and it's completely justified.

Photo by Judeus Samson on Unsplash

This is not a “woo woo” post. This post is not about being in my “soft girl era,” being a “carefree Black girl,” or being “resilient” (whatever the fuck that means). This post is about anger. Justified, unadulterated rage. The kind of madness that makes you wonder if you should call someone for help. This is the kind of fury that comes from somewhere deep in the gut. An ancestral wrath. That’s what this post is about. This post is about being a Black queer nonbinary disabled lesbian and being sick and tired of fighting a world that wants me dead.

I woke up angry this morning. This is probably the first time in my life that I have ever experienced this sentiment. I have often suppressed my anger for fear that my large, masculine body would undermine it’s validity. I was socialized by my mother that women should be small, quiet, feminine, and subservient. My wide gait, broad shoulders, deeper voice, and masculine mannerisms always sat in discord with what my perceived gender demanded of me. The masking, confusion, and challenges I’ve faced trying to contort to fit these raced, gendered, and sexed expectations have taken up so much of my psychic energy over the years that I had very little left just to live.

I AM DONE WITH ALL OF THAT SHIT.

I am pissed off. Here’s a brief list (non-exhaustive) of things that I am angry about right now:

1. The ways we are being gaslit about the genocide of the Palestinian people and are being forced to watch it unfold on the news everyday while simultaneously being silenced about what we are physically seeing with our eyes.

2. The ways that queer and trans people are being written out of government records and documents, our genders and sexual orientations being erased, while cisgender heterosexual people sit quietly witnessing it.

3. The ways white women keep saying “all women” when they really mean white women and have always meant white women and will always mean white women.

4. The ways disabled people are being overlooked and ignored by people who claim to be in solidarity with us because they can’t stand even the slightest interruption or inconvenience to their highly privileged lives.

5. The ways horrible, nasty, abusive, stupid, disgusting, doo doo streak having men have been getting propped up by other doo doo streakers with tiny penises and even tinier IQs.

6. The ways children are being denied the right to read books written by and about people who look, love, and live like them.

7. The ways poor people are being forced to carry all of the grossest and most violent weights of capitalism as a literal demon rips away all of the safety nets in this country.

8. THE FACT THAT A LITERAL ORANGE DEMON IS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY.

I’m mad.

I’m angry.

I’m heated.

I’m hot.

I’m blown.

I’m pissed.

I’m over it.

I’m irate.

I’m fuming.

I AM MAD.

I am an angry Black woman and it is completely justified.

I reflect frequently on the words of Toni Morrison, the greatest writer of all time. She said:

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

This is what we have been doing for the past ten years (and obviously longer than that but stay with me here). Since the inception of the Movement for Black Lives, Black, Brown, queer, trans, disabled, poor and immigrant folks have not only been fighting for every breath, every moment, and every minute of our lives, we have been dealing with white people of all genders, sexual orientations, ages, classes, and religious backgrounds shouting us down, ignoring us, gaslighting us, and pretending to be completely ignorant about the world around us. Men keep telling us rape and abuse aren’t real. White folks keep telling us racism is reversible. Straights keep telling us we are making kids gay. Wealthy folks are telling us the money finna trickle down. All these muthafuckas are LYING.

I’m done playing with y’all. I’m not doing it. Don’t come over here looking for soft hands and even softer words. I refuse to play nice and get along with my murderers.

Last week, I submitted final grades for my Black Feminist Politics courses. I teach two at Syracuse University, one for undergraduates and one for graduate students. These courses are arguably my favorites to teach. I get to spend an entire semester discussing freedom, Black mothering, abolition and policing, and queer radical politics with mostly Black students who are hungering for Black Feminist knowledge and training. This semester was different, though, because it was a semester where I not only had teaching responsibilities but, as a mentor, comrade, and decent person, also spent a good deal of my time journeying with students through the most terrifying political moment of recent history.

On the back of Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, a first Trump election, Palestine, and a second Trump election, my students are tired. They are terrified. They are scared. They are afraid. They are uncertain. They are hurt. They are somber. They are worried. And, they don’t know what comes next, who to trust, or how to believe in this place anymore.

I. Get. It.

This is god awful. This moment is unrelenting and frightening.

We did everything we were told to do. We got the grades. We went to college. We got that job. We were nice to the white people. We allowed people to walk all over us. We laid under their feet. We shrunk ourselves. We let them lie on us. We just took it. Why? Because everyone told us that was how you get free. That was supposed to get us the happiness, the joy, the respect, the kindness, and the basic human decency.

But, it wasn’t true. It was actually just a lie they told themselves because someone told them the lie and then the lie just started telling itself over and over and over again.

All of this is a lie.

The only thing that is true is our rage. Our guts. Our feelings. Our righteous indignance. That is what is true.

That, and our love. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. And, it is a miracle that you and me and we are still here. And I love you. And I am grateful for you. And you deserve to live and be free and have joy.

And be angry as fuck.

I am, too. I don’t want to say we’re going to be alright because I’m not sure anymore and I’m sorry to have to say that. But, I love you. And we have a right to be angry every fucking day.