Nemsie Gonzalez
Editor-in-Chief
I have seen online many people calling for the end of “wokeism” and the soft liberal left, but for me and many of my friends, we are struggling to remember when the last time people were actually woke; I’m particularly thinking about my white peers here. In my opinion, ‘woke’ was really just an opportunity for Black and brown folks to call out behavior in a way we couldn’t before. White tears have been around since the beginning of time it seems, allowing white people to call out “injustice” whenever they deemed it necessary. At a time where people of color are having the anger literally beat out of them, I worry about the death of woke and what it means now that social justice has seemingly fallen out of style. In my time at the College, I have experienced racism at every level. Considering the amount of privilege I keep as what many would call a white Latina, I can only imagine how much worse the experiences of my Black peers have been and how those who are more visibly Hispanic have been since the Trump administration took over.
This article is not intended to “call out” anyone per se, as many of my previous articles have done – though I encourage you to go back and read those – instead it is intended to encourage my fellow POC to allow themselves to be upset. Through sharing my own experiences here, I hope I can provide comfort to others going through similar feelings of fear, anger and despair; or better yet, encourage those who have stayed silent to begin speaking out and making more moves towards material resistance against oppression. I have found myself recently policing my own emotions, repressing my anger and frustration. Instead, I sit with my most passive of emotions: sadness. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am generally a passionate individual unkeen with letting anyone get away with anything untoward, but recently my fire has gone out.
Recently when in conversation with a friend they asked, “Why aren’t you, like, angry?” I took a minute to respond, caught off guard by the question. My whole life people have been telling me to calm down and relax, be less angry. “I just don’t think I can afford to be angry anymore,” I said. My anger has not been withheld to protect my peace but instead to protect me from the onslaught of comments about how my righteous anger is actually “dangerous” or “scary. ” The nature of oppression is so insidious because it functions to slowly eat away at us and get us to patrol ourselves for ‘bad behavior.’ But, now more than ever, is the time to be angry, upset and hurt to the fullest capacity. My sadness does nothing, my passivity weighs me down, I have never regretted being angry, instead I regret the times when I let my anger take a backseat. I am frequently reminded that no matter what I do, angry outbursts or not, my emotions will be displayed as violent or uncivilized. My anger has been the only thing to protect me in the face of discrimination — even still, the anger of my community at home is what sustains me.
I live about a block away from a local record store that constantly helps channel community anger into good. The Midnight Hour, as it’s called, has pushed its community to take their anger and do something with it. Some examples include storming city council meetings to hold representatives accountable or protesting conservative groups attempting to shut down a drag library reading. My hope is that rather than succumb to our despair, we as communities experiencing so much pain and violence are able to turn that pain into action through virtuous anger. Sadness is important, but anger is too, and it shouldn’t be shied away from. I’m also begging my white peers to be angry with me, to actually boycott on no-buy days and to skip lunch just this once to protest outside of Lowry. It’s okay to give in to your anger sometimes, in fact it might be necessary.