White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

"Carol Anderson is a historian at Emory University. A few years ago, during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, she wrote an article for The Washington Post and it was entitled “White Rage.” In that 1,100-word essay, she’s saying, ‘hey, a lot of people are kind of afraid, kind of uncomfortable with the rage of protesters, and they think that this rage is going to be the end of America.’ And she says, ‘Well, the threat to American values and American ideals has not been black rage historically, it has been due to the rage and the resentment of white folks.’ In the book she takes us through this history: each chapter is a historical moment and shows what some describe as white backlash motivated by white resentment. She shows how that white backlash undid a lot of progress in the world. One of the things she talks about, for example, is the white resentment that arose after Brown vs Board of Education, which provided the opportunity to end segregation in public schools. This was a Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation in all public schools in the United States. So now it was the case, in theory, that black kids and white kids could go to school with each other. There was psychological evidence to back up why this was so important. A very famous study was done with dolls, for example, in which black children were given a choice between white dolls and black dolls. A psychologist showed that the black kids prefer white dolls and when they were asked why, they would say, ‘They’re better, they’re smarter.’ What they concluded is that this was brought about by unequal access that they experienced in their lives. If you live in a segregated world in which white people are given things that you don’t have access to and becoming things that you can never be, you would think that they are better. So the moral and psychological underpinnings of the ruling were that segregation was having a tremendous effect on the lives of black kids who would eventually become black citizens and do we really want this to be the case? Okay, this happens, schools get desegrated and you might think, ‘Oh, this is a wonderful thing, more progress: we’re getting things right.’ And Carol Anderson basically says, ‘Well, there were a lot of white people who were mad. There were a lot of white parents who were resentful.’ So what actally happens? What do they do with that white rage? Well, in certain areas they closed those schools down, even if it risked educating poor white students. So the collateral consequences of this were white folks suffering too. It’s a good historical example of more progress, things are going well, and then white resentment comes on the scene, with this power, with these resources that not only undo the good, but also inflict more suffering. That’s just one example in the history that she underlines. The history of America is a history of white rage, and that’s something that we need to confront head-on. I believe that when the private and public intersect, that’s when you get the complicated political philosophy questions. I also feel that as much as we are individuals with our own particular unique needs and desires, part of the price we pay for being in a relationship and therefore being co-citizens with others is that that can only go so far. So when our needs and our desires become what I call exclusive, when those freedoms begin to infringe on the freedoms and opportunities of others, that’s when we know we’ve gone beyond the pale. So a simple response is that when you don’t want your children to go to school with other children, that’s okay, to a certain degree. Shut the school down, though? I understand that there are certain decisions you can make, but shut the school down in ways that so many people will suffer? That’s when we know we’re making decisions that are politically problematic. In my book, I don’t describe that kind of rage as ‘white’ rage because I don’t think that that kind of rage is limited to people of a particular race. I think there are a lot of decisions that can be made in that way, in which white people don’t necessarily participate. I describe that kind of rage not as white rage, but as ‘wipe’ rage. Wipe is the kind of rage that is motivated by hatred towards another group. Usually, when you hate a particular group, you kind of aim to eliminate them, wipe them out. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you want them dead, you may seek their social elimination, though. Right. And that’s a zero sum game way of thinking. That’s a perspective that influences that particular rage. If you think that there are limited resources, that if you win, everyone else loses, or that if someone else wins, you lose, then that is the kind of thinking and that’s the kind of action and that’s the kind of anger that you’re going to have. I want to say if you live in societies, such as the UK, such as America, listen, there really are enough resources to go around. History tells us that it’s not a zero-sum game. People can win and you can win too. I mean, we’ve been talking about white resentment here, or wipe resentment as I put it. We’ve been talking about conservatism with Buckley. Nothing stays the same. People upgrade their phones every two years. That’s an indicator that everything is in a constant transition. Going back to the school segregation piece, as much as those in power could have argued that their traditions have been infringed upon, they were not the only ones. A tradition of all-black schools, a tradition of being seen, not being minimized and dehumanized and being able to walk to your own school, as opposed to having to be bused was also interrupted in the lives of blacks. That also was a tradition for black students as well. And so they also have to break their traditions to be a participant in an egalitarian context. But you do that in order to benefit the whole, so that society can live up to its creeds. It’s not just white folks who are having to come in contact and go against their traditions. Black folks are also having to do that as well. That is what happens when you come together in a space of difference in order to live among one another in a democratic space. You sacrifice some things, right? And so white people are not the only people who sacrifice. People in power are not the only people who sacrifice. More often than not, it’s those who are attempting to be included that sacrifice the most in order to be included in these particular opportunities. Changing our way of thinking in that particular context can also change our rage as well. It was well received. I like to see this. I like to witness academics become public intellectual stars. Since then, Carol Anderson has come out with two additional books. The book that followed up on this one was about the right to vote and the book after that, recently, was about gun laws, which is completely fascinating. She takes us through a racial history of gun laws. I talk about expressions, being angry and angry expressions in the book. There’s no doubt that I think for lots of folks, whether that be Frederick Douglass , or whether that be Martin Luther King , these are individuals who are human beings who did respond angrily to the injustice of their particular time. But they were strategic, and they were prudent with this particular emotion. History shows us how both of those things can be present at the same time. What I find fascinating about Carol Anderson’s book is that what the history shows us is black people are angry. There’s no doubt that in the 60s we saw black rebellions. But for lots of people, that was the first time that they thought to themselves, ‘Oh, maybe black people are angry.’ I think for a long time the belief that has been perpetuated is that black people have taken their suffering with a smile, that black people are not angry. There’s a pernicious myth that even enslaved Africans were happy to be slaves. For a lot of people who fought for justice, anger wasn’t the kind of emotion that was at the forefront of their minds, particularly when you think about the abolitionists. There were strategic ways in which you presented this stuff, particularly given a context where anger couldn’t really be at the forefront, or even if protest was. So I’m hesitant to say that the white rage was a direct response to the black rage. For a long period of history, it was just not a good look for any indicator of that particular rage. But yet, white resentment can arise on the scene. That’s what she’s trying to bring to our attention."