TW: Descriptions of torture
Dear Reader,
I am a really fucking angry woman. If I was as articulate as I was angry I wouldn’t need to be taking an English class. Luckily though I know, someone both angrier and more articulate than I will ever be, James Baldwin. A quote from To Be Baptized has been bouncing around in my head for a while.
“I said that we could petition and petition and march and march and raise money and give money until we wore ourselves out and the stars began to moan: none of this endeavor would or could reach the core of the matter, it would change nobody’s fate. The thirty thousand dollars raised tonight would be gone in bail bonds in the morning, and so it would continue until we dropped. Nothing would ever reach the conscience of the people of this nation–it was a dream to suppose that the people of any nation had a conscience. Some individuals within the nation might, and the nation always saw to it that these people came to a bad, if not a bloody end. Nothing we could do would prevent, at last, an open confrontation. And where, then, when the chips were down, would we stand?” (Baldwin 436).
America doesn’t have a fucking conscience, it never did, and any peaceful protest will fail. I think that Claire fails to understand this in his concerns that “The harder part…rural homophobic violence.” (Claire Losing Home 44). While I admire this idea that we can simply “dialog across our differences” it’s ultimately proven to be a false one.
Rat torture. Reserved for the worst of the worst. What they’d do is take a bunch of rats, put them in a bucket, and place that bucket upside down on the wretched creature’s stomach. The rats would scamper around for a while, trying to get out of the bucket, banging their little heads and hands against the steel, until they’d realize there was only one way out. Rat teeth can’t tear through steel but they’re more than sharp enough to rip through flesh.
Claire has fallen in love with the man whose belly he sits upon and tries to claw his way through steel. I’m not going to try to talk to someone who doesn’t believe that I have a right to exist and try to convince them that “actually I am a human being.” Claire is either an idiot or a fool for asking me to try. What are you even talking about? The paradox of tolerance is an essential part of any worthwhile philosophy.
I’m generally so sick and fucking tired of this idea of “calling people in instead of calling them out.” Would you ask a sheep to call a wolf in? FUCK NO. You get that sheep *something* to make sure that the wolf stays the fuck away from your woolly little buddy. Like, if someone calls me a faggot my response isn’t going to be “H-hey it’s wrong to talk to people like that.” You know what I’m going to say? “FUCK YOU!!!”
Yours in Burning Hot Rage That Boils Me Alive,
Carmine “Red” Zingiber
Baldwin, J. (1998). James Baldwin – Collected Essays. Penguin.
** note: edited by Prof Kersh on 10/9. Please feel free to ask me any questions**
I’m not entirely sure what to say to all of this because to be honest, I think you’re expressing something that a lot of people think but don’t always say. I think often we police our own emotions, trying to manage them in a way that is “positive.” But I agree with you that it is next to impossible to be anything but angry about these wrongs. Last month, Dickinson had a speaker for the Clark Forum, Myisha Cherry, and I was hoping that you went to that talk. She talked about rage, specifically Lordean Rage (A term coined by her referencing Audre Lorde, which I think you would appreciate) which I think is very applicable here. She talked about using that rage and letting it fuel change. I think that could look like exactly what you’re describing– telling the racists and homophobes who look down upon us to “fuck off.” There is no doubt that those who have been marginalized have a right to be angry. There is no doubt in my mind that they have a right to fight back against those who have marginalized them. But ultimately, I think that the thing we want most at the end of the day, after revenge, is results. We can scream at the world all we want, as long as we are doing it for the benefit and in the defense of our communities.