I Am An Angry Black Man
Author: Michael Eric Owens
“Our identity colors how we view the world. It shapes our behavior and our interaction with each other. Without settling the identity question, the individual as well as the group are rendered inoperative in their community and the larger society. Identity matters.”
Black identity has been one of the greatest crises of the American chronology. The question remains just what to name them? We have learned from history that no one external to a group can properly denote the group. For white America to maintain their supremacy, they had to paint the American landscape with a black and white brush. In order to establish a victor, one must create a villain. Among all the peoples of the world, black men cannot express disappointment, grief, or anger, or challenge authority without being called an “angry black man.” Although anger is a human emotion, black men are not afforded this luxury. Why is this? Take President Obama, for instance. He was fully aware of this phenomenon. If he came remotely close to expressing rancor or disgust, he was attacked as an angry black man. Historically, an expression of anger by a black man has been met with uncontrollable rage and contempt, even by those whose words and deeds were aimed as projectiles at their dark-skinned targets. Yet, white men can get away with expressing anger each and every day of their lives.
I suggest that this sentiment is based in the notion of black men being prone to violence. I was told by a white friend of mine that he understood his white privilege after an incident in which he argued profusely with several police officers by whom he’d felt disrespected. He not only argued with them, but he went back after the event to tell them just how wrong and disrespectful they had been to him. This is something a black man could never do. Well, he could… but the outcome would most likely be deadly. My friend told me at that moment, he realized just how privileged he was as a white man.
The roots of this form of oppression are as deep and wide as the American experience. Slave masters demanded that slaves be docile and emotionless. Imagine for a moment that you were punished the next time you cried, or got disappointed, or showed anger. Slaves were forced to accept every horrible episode and subjugation, with contentment! Consider being a man hearing your wife or daughter being raped, and you are forbidden from expressing outrage. What does such anguish do to the human soul? I suggest it takes a toll. It is clear that most of society desires for black people to be quiet, docile creatures. Black people are told, Stop your complaining; stop talking about the injustices waged against you.
Some black people have adopted this identity. At one job I had, I put a Malcolm X poster on the wall. It’s a picture of X that I love. He is actually laughing and smiling. It shows a different, playful side of the black prophet. The caption on the posters reads, “Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research.” This is a true statement by Malcolm. How can we best understand our present, lacking a knowledge of history? Yet I was told by a black community leader who observed this poster while in my office that I needed to take it down.
I asked why would I do that? He replied, “You will make a lot of people nervous.” I stated that it was my office and I didn’t care about making people nervous. He declared, “This is Oklahoma, and you need to learn your place.” My place? My place? In other words, I must learn how to be what they (dominant culture) desire for me to be – docile. Frankly, I wouldn’t know my place if you pointed it out to me. Many experiences from my childhood left me feeling pinned between two worlds. One in which a person with light brown skin and green eyes was seen as not containing the complete set of attributes of blackness, and one where dark skin color was paraded by the larger society as the antithesis of white, and as therefore inferior. I was raised to think for myself and express whatever I felt the need to.
To many, Malcolm X was an angry man. He was a man who did not ask, but demanded things of our society without apology. He was the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There were those to whom King’s non-violence fight for equal rights seemed docile, and many believed that black leaders needed to adopt such an approach. However, soon King began to speak out against the Vietnam War and injustices across the globe, and this made him a threat – he had become an angry black man. King had ventured outside his lane. There is a saying in the Navy that if you want to bring about change you have to make waves. Yet waves created by black men are seen as out of bounds by the establishment.
My family has been able to trace our ancestry as far back as slavery, and we continue to track down and unearth every clue, hoping that some connection will be made to the continent of Africa. The slave system not only destroyed families, but also dismantled individual family histories. Black people, we need to be angry, but our anger is not correctly displayed in looting and destruction. Our anger is best played out in voting and petitioning our legislators to vote in ways that change our condition. Some blacks have advocated for leaving America and returning to Africa. Why? This is our country. We built this great nation, and this nation has yet to fulfill its promises. These promises must be met, and our anger plays a part in ensuring that it comes to pass. The next time you conclude that black men are an angry bunch, stop and realize that we have plenty of reasons to be angry. And if you want us to show less anger, than give us what we deserve.
Hope changed Malcolm Little, a street thug, to Malcolm X, the black prophet. Hope called Martin’s name, and he became the “King” who changed humanity. Hope is contagious, powerful and enduring. If we can successfully regenerate hope, we can reestablish the bounds of unity, and by doing so, enter into a new era of change. Hope affords us the opportunity to cast a new identity: an identity that speaks of cultural pride, compassion, and commitment to family and community; an identity that echoes to the world that incarceration is not part of our DNA. Our identity colors how we view the world. It shapes our behavior and our interaction with each other. Without settling the identity question, the individual as well as the group are rendered inoperative in their community and the larger society. Identity matters.
