Thompson: ‘To be in a rage almost all the time’
By Marcus Thompson II May 28, 2020 220
In 1961, WBAI Radio, a listener-supported station in New York, held a discussion with a panel that included three incomparable African American writers: author James Baldwin, playwright Lorraine Hansberry and poet Langston Hughes. This was epic literary and intellectual weight.
The conversation began with Baldwin, by then a supremely accomplished author, explaining the polarity of being African American and a writer.
“The first thing, the first difficulty, is really so simple it’s usually overlooked. To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.”
This conversation was then published in the quarterly academic journal CrossCurrents that summer. And culled from this opening monologue, edited in the print version, was this Baldwin gem:
To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won’t destroy you.
The rage from Ahmaud Arbery had barely subsided before the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis officer relit the bonfire. Just like that, the rage was back. This Baldwin quote came to mind as former NBA veteran Stephen Jackson cried on social media, mourning the loss of his “twin.” As Stephen Curry vented on Instagram. As Cowboys defensive lineman DeMarcus Lawrence typed in all caps on Twitter. As Lisa Leslie drew a clear line among her followers.
Rage. Almost all the time.
This Baldwin explanation was ever-present as friends and family, again, reminded each other of the potential dangers awaiting. As the discussion turned to Amy Cooper, a white woman captured on video in New York’s Central Park attempting to conjure those dangers for her own benefit. As I failed three times to have the talk again with my teenage daughter, because she needs to hear it from her father instead of someone on TikTok.
Control it. So it won’t destroy you.
The rage on its own is unhealthy to keep, and potentially dangerous to deploy. The last thing a spouse and parent, a good one, anyway, wants to do is unleash it on his or her own family. So, like many of us, I’ve found places to put this rage. To get it out of my soul, to keep it off my psyche. But it is starting to feel like all those places I’ve used to stash this rage are full. The bins are overflowing with hazardous energy. We’re running out of places to put it.
A muse of sorts I run ideas by suggested my writings be centered on moving forward. I was sharing how I noticed the eerie silence of many of the non-Black people in my life, especially those who like to purport themselves to be my friend. For the better part of two days, as the rage boiled, some of the same people who couldn’t stop talking to me about “The Last Dance” suddenly didn’t find me an interesting conversationalist. He reminded me people may not know they should reach out or were afraid to reach out. “Should they reach out to all their Black friends?” he asked. I don’t know. Nor at this juncture do I care to walk others through how to care about their Black friends. But I did come away with the answer to the question of what do we do.
Don’t look away.
As a society, for one, we must stop ignoring the reality of this rage. You should not look away.
Look around at the sports world. The very athletes we typically shroud with affection, with all their wealth and fame, can’t shake the rage, either. Today’s athlete is arguably as conscious as ever, especially the sheer volume of athletes who are intentionally so. These days, they are voicing it as a collective perhaps in greater volume than ever before. To not listen, to not watch, to turn away, is essentially affirming the very foundational ideology that produces the rage. It is all born of the frustration and anger of being human yet not being fully recognized for that. Of knowing that one’s intrinsic value is being disregarded and routinely stripped. I’m not even sure if she notices, but my wife says the same line every time this experience is brought back to the forefront: “Wow. They really hate us, huh?” It is chilling and haunting every time because somewhere, usually unbeknownst to us, and likely more often than even we’d guess, the answer is yes.
It is dehumanization that has, for the life of this country, made it possible, even favorable, to harm Black bodies and Black lives. It is so ingratiated into the fabric of our society that even Black people have adopted the practices of intraracial dehumanization. The cruel part about our segment of the timeline on the African American experience in America is how easy it is to escape. This anti-Black spirit doesn’t feel as omnipresent as it must have for those writers on that panel. The entire conversation of that panel was centered on, essentially, how much of their experience as Blacks in America should infiltrate their writing. Do they get to just write, for the love and craft of writing and storytelling, without having to inject the obvious and pervasive issues in which their life was embedded?
Hansberry, whose most famous work is “Raisin in the Sun,” followed Baldwin’s opening monologue with a perfectly crafted explanation of managing the dual task of being a writer just trying to ply her craft and an African American just trying to live. It included this gem:
“I can’t imagine a contemporary writer any place in the world today who isn’t in conflict with his world. Personally, I can’t imagine a time in the world when the artist wasn’t in conflict. If he was any kind of artist, he had to be. So that it isn’t unique that we are doubly aware of it because of the special pressures of being a Negro in America.”
I’d contend athletes are evidence of Hansberry’s accuracy. They, too, are in conflict with their world. They aren’t artists in the traditional sense. Their work doesn’t help us understand the world but escape it. Yet, even with their role temporarily freeing us from reality, they themselves can’t truly escape. Don’t look away as they share their rage. Don’t demean them or their rage by positing they don’t have rights to feel or express such — because, as Baldwin said, it isn’t just about what happens to them but what is happening all around them. Just imagine how great the internal conflict must be for those who are so esteemed, as if they somehow ascended beyond the plight of an African American, only to be suddenly jarred with a reminder such ascension was a mirage. That’s what happens every time a face that looks like theirs, or their loved ones, is so easily rendered meaningless. Don’t look away because they are done acting as if their rage can be smothered by the luxuries of their life or drowned out by the faux love in which they shower.
The athletes aren’t alone, obviously. Rage has taken over the streets as protests have again sprung up. Non-Black people are feeling rage — including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has called for the arresting officer to be charged criminally, and white police chiefs across the country — and having a hard time controlling it. We can’t look away from their rage, either.
Of course, as always, ready to rival the rage, is the dehumanization. The idiotic commentary and knee-jerk response to the reaction, while blatantly ignoring the cause, sprouted up instantaneously as stubborn resistance. Just as it did when Colin Kaepernick stopped ignoring his rage. Because it’s so much easier to investigate the rage, analyze how it manifests, than to actually deal with what caused it.
A complex thing can’t be made simple. Dealt with in all its complexities.
There is no single answer to the question: What do we do? There certainly isn’t a simple answer for how to prevent the rage. The answers are layered, challenging, some even unearthed.
My answer is usually to write. Less an answer, more a coping mechanism. Sometimes, it makes it into the space where my craft is plied. Baldwin’s opening monologue was sparked by a question about his New York Times review on a collection of Hughes’ poems. In it, he said Hughes “wasn’t the first American Negro to find the war between his social and artistic responsibilities all but irreconcilable.” Even sportswriters wage that war, only to reach the same conclusion. Yet, it’s what we do.
My writing-out-the-rage process usually begins with isolation. The ability to put on a good face diminishes. The desire to engage in nugacities all but vanishes. The patience for heartless responses and even inadvertent flaunts of privilege quickly extinguishes. Then begins the deep thinking, prayer, meditation and heavy conversations with people in my life who can handle such weight. Sometimes, we calm each other. Sometimes, we serve as bins for each other’s rage. And, usually, I am struck with a thread on which to organize my words.
I don’t profess the ability or understanding of Baldwin or Hansberry or Hughes, or of my contemporaries, a la Nikole Hannah-Jones or Marc Lamont Hill or Jelani Cobb or Jemele Hill. The words to explain the feeling of being reminded of your value, your origins, your potential fate, they don’t come out so freely and exceptionally. Not nearly as does the rage.
So I write. With hopes it doesn’t destroy me.
(Photo: Kerem Yucel / AFP via Getty Images)
Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic. He is a prominent voice in the Bay Area sports scene after 18 years with Bay Area News Group, including 10 seasons covering the Warriors and four as a columnist. Marcus is also the author of the best-selling biography "GOLDEN: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry." Follow Marcus on Twitter @thompsonscribe.