"What does anger mean for the immigrant?" - What we're talking about when we talk about "political correctness", inclusion, and social justice, Part 1

Appropos this thread, there are rather horrifying levels of anger, vituperation, and bitterness about what could be more descriptive, accurate, and less freighted changes in nomenclature. The Python commit at issue was done poorly by reasonable technical standards of the community, but the change was as necessary as removing a painful splinter - once you notice the problem, you can't unnotice it. This is a microcosmic war deriving from macro problems.

However, for me the question isn't just one of cleaning up the toxic relics of blind, unipolar thinking, but also acknowledging that there are more important things to do for all of us - to help people embrace complexity, to stop seeing their own pain through binary filters of black/white, male/female, young/old, native/immigrant, winners/losers. To participate in unification for everyone's interests.

One of the most punishing problems with "political correctness" (not simply the caricature, but the actual practice) is that it addresses splinters when the world is full of broken bones. Many of us lack the power and/or knowledge to confront more dangerous forms of oppression that cut across all the binaries. We're not yet telling stories about the inclusive "us" and what the world we want looks like, because we're consumed with naming and fighting the oppressive "them".

There are malign storytellers whose aim is to consolidate and direct "white", "male" anger against everyone else, defending and reinforcing economic power structures which are not favorable to the vast majority of those same white males. There is an economic system which is harming the vast majority of people, regardless of color, which succeeds politically by atomizing us into the smallest possible tribes of identity.

I'd like to call attention to truths about complexity, about our overlapping spheres of mutual interest. That we are all participants in cooperative or combative relationships, constantly striving towards equilibrium, and as such are obliged to accept each other at face value, on the basis of information rather than promoted stories about "others". That we recognize the advantages and disadvantages we're all subject to. That we strive toward recognition of how we can become better people in a better civilization, rather than grasping after fictional stories of greater and lesser identities. That we take history fully into account in recognition of where we need to improve. That we ask, not declare, how to make a more just and equitable world for all of its inhabitants. That we owe each other the benefit of open, empathetic attention, rather than polarized judgment.

In that spirit, I've linked a story which effectively captures the complex personal, emotional experience of identity and oppression. Dr. Sen's essay illustrates how capitulation to the dominant narrative of success isn't sufficient to make "otherness" safe, and acknowledges the nature of relative power - who has a "right" to express anger.

[If you read the story through, you'll also note that it's a lesson in the value of broad exposure to humanities - literature, history, geography, mythology, comparative religion... Dr. Sen couldn't be so eloquent and precise in her explanation without that background.]

If you've made it this far, thank you for your attention, and hopefully, your input.

At the end of the 19th century, the African Amer­ican poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote,

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes

In the early decades of the 21st century, I know that if I stop grinning, I will frighten others with my anger. Anger is the useless emotion of people with grievances. Civilized people, superior people, capable people manage anger through reason, televised town hall meetings, logic gates, strategic planning, branding exercises, op­-eds, and fireside chats with tea and sherry.

In the universities of America today there are angry students who say that when people of paler complexions use pigments to darken their faces and redden their lips for Halloween, when people with blond straight hair wear dark curly wigs in order to dress as a rapper, they are in­sulting black people. “Don’t curb our freedom and be a killjoy who doesn’t understand that Halloween is about experimentation,” say their opponents. “Children, do you want adults to tell you how to dress? Do you want to whine about microaggressions and institutionalized racism? Re­member, out there in the real world, outside college, no one will give you trigger warnings in a boardroom meeting.” Those who think angry students of color are pampered minorities continue, “Institutionalized racism is a figment of your imagination. This is the reign of emancipation. Jim Crow is a chapter in the history books. The empire has folded up its flags and bid farewell to the natives. Stop com­plaining, pull up your pants, and learn to have a little fun. We cannot go around changing names of buildings just because the name happens to belong to a white man who owned slaves. Think of all the good qualities the slave owner had. Think of all the wondrous things he did for this country.”

“What’s wrong with a little racial ventriloquism? Race is just performance. Race is a metaphor. Race is a biologi­cal fiction. Let us perform our identities.” (These are the graduate­ school­ educated voices of America.) “What’s wrong with having a little fun?” (These are teenage voices in America.) “Parading in blackface is our cultural heri­tage. We will fight to protect our heritage.” (That is Dutch people parading as Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, on Saint Nicholas’s Day.) These voices, I wager, are mostly white.

Why do blackface and brownface bother me? Because I have been wearing whiteface for so long. Because my Hal­loween never ends. The tricks and the treats are not toilet paper and cheap candy. The truth is that the opposite of blackface is not whiteface. Blackface is jolly, makes fun of others, is entertainment, is a game you get to play when you are already the winner. Whiteface is sad, demeans me, is deadly serious, is a game we play when we know we are on the losing team.

Blackface makes me angry because whiteface is not its opposite. And anger is no longer a heroic emotion. The age of Achilles is over. Gods and heroes no longer rage as the topless towers of Ilium burn. Now anger is a Third World emotion. Anger is a militant black. Anger is a shrill woman. Anger is a jihadi. Because we know this, many of us also hide our anger behind elaborate masks of comedy.