White Rage

A primer from Historian Carol Anderson into an age old rage that threatens democracy.

We laugh so we do not cry.

There are jokes we tell to hold at arm’s length the truth that would otherwise implode within us.

There is one we tell in my family. It is about “The Great Riot”.

We tell it like this, because of the way my neighbors lined up with scowls and iPhone cameras held out to film us. Because of the anger and rage they barely contained as the “dangerous riot” unfolded on a main street in our small town. Because of the smugness on the faces of the officers paid by our high taxes to protect our community’s excess and loot, the second mansions, our 15-car garages, and the lawns of all the celebrities that hide their lives here.

I remember it was 2018 and a group of high schoolers, a dad, and a teacher walked in honor of yet another man unrighteously gunned down by law enforcement.

Those facial expressions of my angry neighbors have never left me, how they did not change as the scant group of high schoolers wept and wailed their way down the street, defying the law and its officers who wanted them off those streets and this island and out of the way.

I remember how one young Black boy’s face crumpled, as tears streamed down his face. He was asking the police officers why. He was asking them when they would shoot him. He was asking who was next.

The White classmates were grieved and helpless and angry. They were so scared, and they tried to pull at the boy as if they could shield him. The teacher told them to stop. To let him say his piece.

It has taken some of us far too long to learn why a group of high schoolers peacefully protesting would require a police helicopter and a parade of officers and their vehicles. It took me too long to learn that identity politics were not only acted out on the street but also by my neighbors and the law enforcement we had tasked to “save” us.

The young boy bawling on the street defiantly is a kind of visible anger and fear. That’s the one we focus on. Ron DeSantis quietly targeting and squeezing the voting systems that maximize turnout is invisible anger and fear. But it is legal. The boy standing in the road is statistically, due to factors beyond that young man’s control, has less legal and political power to wield than DeSantis. He has only the street. He has his little defiance. But men like DeSantis have the cover of respectability. They have vetoes. They have millions of dollars in donor money.

In Professor Carol Anderson’s book White Rage, she works to quickly and easily demonstrate how the democracy we all want is frequently undercut and undermined by people who feel threatened. Threatened by the people their ancestors hated and abused. Threatened by immigrants they are convinced will take their jobs. Threatened by foreigners who are there to supply a demand citizens crave. The irony of hating the hand you paid to feed you. The irony of these men who rage against immigrant families and cartel crossings, but who still pay them hungrily to get access to the bodies of trafficked migrant women (I am looking at you, Florida).

The speed at which someone will undermine a democratic institution or law or safeguard for that hit of racial superiority is breathtaking but must demand attention. Professor Anderson’s work is a very simple way to understand and cut through the national noise and chatter around law and order and weakening trust in each other. To know where the national wound is and understand it is a way of fighting back the inevitable, ever-present social infection.

If you want to read the viral op-ed that started it all, click here for her Washington Post essay.

If you prefer podcasts, listen to her fun and informative conversation with Sean Illing here.

To order her book White Rage, click here.

If you want to watch her lecture at Emory here on topic, click here.