Race & anger.

June 1983, when I was between my sophomore and junior years of college and was in search of summer work, I called a number listed in the newspaper and made an appointment to interview for a sales job. I put on my best suit, left my mother's house in Northeast Washington, D.C., and trekked to suburban Maryland, where I discovered that I had come to a group orientation rather than an interview.

Ten or twelve of us, all dressed as if for church, sat at a rectangular table and listened as a trim, smooth-voiced, middle-aged man gave us the lowdown on selling Cutco knives. When he had finished his talk, which was sprinkled with witty asides and self-deprecating humor, the man passed out applications. I was about half-way through mine when he summoned me to a separate room. In a pleasant tone, he asked me questions based on the part of the application I'd completed. Beyond that, my memory of the exchange becomes fuzzy. I know he told me something of such an innocuous, inoffensive nature that I not only had trouble remembering it later but failed to question what lay behind it as he spoke. Not until I had left the office, without having completed my application, was I struck by why I had been led to do so: Of the dozen or so people seated at the rectangular table, I was the only African-American.

I cannot, and may never be able to, recall that incident without feeling acute shame at my past naivete and also impotent rage at the racism - breathed in like air by all of us each day - that made the incident possible. Of course, as an example of racial oppression, the story doesn't rate very high. But that is my point.

I have moments, as I believe every member of a minority group does, when my consciousness rises above the level of daily concerns, career aspirations, etc., when I look at the world not through the lens of fatherhood, husbandhood, or employeehood, but see with an unobstructed view. And then I think, with an anger that practically chokes me: This is the world I live in ?

Still I'm less interested in anger than in how to deal with it. When one feels choked by it, the natural reaction is to want to do a little choking of one's own; or, failing that, to label as devils those who have created the situation, and all who look like them. Neither response, however, fits my own nature. I don't have the stomach for the first, and my intellect, which provides me with a knowledge of the variety of human attitudes within any given group, won't permit the second. This leaves me in a bind. What do I do with my feelings?

The key may be my intellect - puzzling in itself, since its argument is too strong to allow me to condemn white people as a group, yet its influence is too weak to prevent that impulse in me. It would seem to require modification: either strengthening, so that it can calm me down; or weakening, so that I can act on my hostile urges.

Assume that a stronger intellect is the better course. Being the best teacher, experience ought to strengthen that portion of me that rejects a Nation-of-Islam-style condemnation of white people - because by having practiced that rejection, I would know firsthand its folly and ugliness. Two of the writers I most admire, the black essayists Stanley Crouch and Shelby Steele, are quite eloquent in their denunciation of "reverse" racism, yet each admits to having passed through a separatist/black-nationalist phase before reaching a more balanced view of life. But must I experience a similar phase? For me, and others like me, it hardly seems necessary (or possible) since we are already intellectually aware of its very folly.

Besides, my anger - a reaction to racist acts - cannot be forever purged by such a method. Racism is not merely a guest in American society, it is a permanent resident: one that can be counted on to rekindle rage regularly. So, becoming a separatist might provide me with an apparent quick fix, but I would soon be back where I started, with the added problem of having compromised my principles.

The bind, then, remains: My intellect stands in the way of my acting in a hostile manner, yet my anger is eternal - as it should be. Still, anger need not consume me. If it cannot be entirely eliminated, it can be channeled; if not acted upon, acknowledged. I know there are many African-Americans like me who reject racist generalizations and want to convert their rage into a positive force. Let us talk to each other: our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and lovers, black and white; and while fighting racism, let us affirm the humanity of all people, lest our own be diminished.