[This is a companion piece to “Anger and Unmet Needs,” 8/21/20.]
“When people of color speak out about systemic racism, they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you. They are not doing this because they enjoy it; it is an incredibly painful and vulnerable experience. We do this because we have to, because systemic racism is killing us. And yes, that pain and fear and anger will sometimes show in our words and our actions. But to see all that pain, and how we fight still after entire lifetimes of struggle—and then to tell us to be more polite is just plain cruel.”
—Ijeoma Oluo,
So you want to talk about race (2018)
Detail, daily drawing, oil pastels and pen on paper.
In her chapter about tone policing, written primarily for a white audience, Ijeoma Oluo describes the harm it does when someone white censures the angry tone of a person of color who is speaking about racism. Tone policing is criticizing the tone or style of someone’s message to shift attention away from the content to something wrong the speaker is doing. Because we don’t like what a person is saying, we invalidate their right to speak at all by claiming they’re too angry. Tone policing is a way to assert dominance over the situation, deflecting attention away from the message, and making our participation conditional on a certain form of polite speech.
I know I’ve done this: police the tone of people who are speaking to me. I do it regularly with my husband, who is white like me. During the early years of our marriage our arguments were often heated, and neither one of us responded well. In our case, we both grew up in unpredictably violent and abusive families, so when we detect anger, our nervous systems immediately go on alert. We get defensive and the anger escalates, we shut down and withdraw, we feel victimized and hurt. When someone comes at me with anger, the small child in me feels threatened and bullied. As an adult, I want to stick up for her. But since anger is natural, and something both my husband and I feel fairly often, we wanted to find a way to deal with conflict without anger being at the forefront. We agreed to communicate without such an angry tone. In the process, we’ve become mindful of our reactivity to anger, and we’ve gotten a lot more skillful in dealing with it. Working with anger intentionally, our interactions have given us the chance to heal old wounds associated with that emotion.
We consciously decided to check each other’s tone because it was so upsetting to the one we love. People are not always aware of how angry they sound or how it affects others. This doesn’t mean our anger is bad, wrong or shameful; each of us is entitled to feel whatever we feel. Anger gives us important information and the energy to speak up, defend ourselves, and fight for change. But in our relationship, talking to each other in anger destroys the feeling of safety and trust. So, when we’re hopped up on anger, we pause, take a break, independently work through the anger to what lies underneath, and return to the conflict when the high state of anger has passed. Neither one of us learned how to do this as a kid.
Having learned to express anger in less destructive ways, we’re now more comfortable being around each other when we are angry. And we’re less likely to interpret the other person’s anger as a personal attack. Expressions of anger are not always expressions of harm. Nonetheless, anger is a powerful emotion, and we do our best not to push each other around with it. Given our histories, this approach works for us.
However, what works in a private situation between people of the same race doesn’t always work in more public cross-racial settings. Especially in discussions about racism. I’ve found this out in my college teaching. Years ago, in one of my seminars, I objected when I thought anger was too strong in group discussions about race and institutional bias. After things kept getting heated in class, I suggested that anger is not the best way to fight injustice and wondered out loud if we could find a way to allow for personal emotions without interjecting them into the tone of the conversation. I cautioned against anger because it tends to upset others, making it hard to receive and listen to what someone is saying, much less empathize with or care about someone else. Since the person who expressed the most anger in our class was a person of color, I effectively singled them out in my general comment. I put the onus on them by asking them to tone it down for the sake of the group.
At the time of this interaction, even though we were talking about racism, I wasn’t tuned in to my whiteness and white supremacy, and didn’t see my behavior in that light. In fact, given my position as the professor, I thought it was my responsibility to protect others from someone else’s repeated anger. I assumed that my past experience with toxic effects of anger in relationships gave me better insight and firm ground to stand on. Out of that I felt obligated to coach another person in how to talk about the issues, at least “for people like me.”
It’s hard to look at my racism and see the harm I’ve caused. It doesn’t matter that my intentions were good and that there’s truth to my experience. In this particular instance, while I encouraged emotions to be part of our discussions, and acknowledged my personal discomfort with anger, I wish I hadn’t foregrounded my feelings of upset at the expense of my student’s. I didn’t recognize at the time just how vulnerable it is for a person of color to speak up about their experience of racism to a predominantly white audience. The initial trust to reveal their anger and pain was inadvertently broken when I asked them to dial it down.
In retrospect, I could have handled the situation better. Yes, it’s hard to share space with someone who is actively angry. In a classroom setting, I’ve found it hard to ask others to witness that anger and then expect them to deal with any personal reactivity and aversion toward that emotion. Anger is a trigger for many of us and can be retraumatizing. However, anger arises when we talk about race and white supremacy. It’s not going to be all love and positivity all the time or even calm and level-headed. Especially in mixed groups, there are going to be moments of rage, pain, grief, and despair. Moments of conflict, tension, misunderstanding, and disconnection. In the struggle for freedom, we need to celebrate moments of unity and peaceful coming together and also understand that there’s tremendous racial anger. As Oleo points out, it’s not about me liking or not liking someone else’s manner of fighting for justice. When a person of color generously shares their experience, the least I can do is listen without correcting their tone.
Admittedly I haven’t always been able to meet racial anger with the presence and resilience I describe here. Anti-racism asks me to rethink the tactic of asking others to tone down their anger in discussions of race.
So, what’s needed for me to show up in a better way? A commitment to do my own work and change my behavior, which includes:
Cultivating emotional intelligence and flexibility
Cultivating conscious awareness of my reactivity and past conditioning that make anger so distressing for me
Processing these past experiences so I don’t continue to project them into the present
Healing my own issues with anger so I don’t block out others in theirs
Keeping energetic boundaries so I can remain present to other’s emotions without absorbing them or taking them so personally
Being clear about the difference between anger and abuse and watching any tendency to assume a victim role
Remembering that my internal sense of safety is my responsibility even when my nervous system thinks otherwise
Not expecting others to modulate their tone and delivery for my sake
Not expecting that I can ignore my whiteness
Learning to acknowledge my part in racism without internally collapsing or blaming the person pointing out my biases and privilege
Learning to tolerate discomfort during discussions about race
Learning to listen in a mindful, compassionate, heart-centered way
When I choose to take better care of the people of color I share spaces with, I also choose to take care of myself. Each interaction that creates discomfort in me reveals where I can heal and grow. This conscious awareness enhances the whole.
The commitment to practice anti-racism is actually making me rethink the way my husband and I tone police each other. I don’t want to crumble in the face of someone else’s anger but compassionately stand my ground and listen for what is underneath the anger—for the needs not being met, for the way my actions have inadvertently or directly caused harm, for their past experiences that have informed their present emotions, for what we each need to move forward in our relationship. What served us in the beginning of our marriage is evolving. Just as my own behavior toward diverse others is evolving.