On Bitterness

Beating back bitterness is a tall order these days. It seems, at least to me, that a large swath of Americans has succumbed to their darker angels. Reveling in hate and grievance. Of course, there are economic realities. Billionaires have hijacked the government. Money distorts not only our politics but our characters.

Trump policies have hurt the people who staunchly support him. Many have expressed their anger. Not necessarily at the assault on DEI or the banning of books or the execution of immigration policies or the sustained attack on civil rights (although some have worried about the rule of law), but they rage at the fact that these policies have affected their lives. And rightly so. Yet, selfishness and hypocrisy color so much of their discontent.

One wonders if Trump’s policies hadn’t touched them would they have said a mumbling word as his hate affected us.

I recently gave a lecture at a university, and a white woman approached me afterwards. She was earnest and expressed her concerns about the tone of the questions after my talk. “We seem so separated,” she said. “Baldwin didn’t embrace separation. He called for us to come together.” I thought for a moment. Lingered on the word separation and the slight tremor in her voice. Was this the sentimentality Baldwin loathed?

I leaned in and said that separation wasn’t quite the right word. What is happening is a kind of recoiling, a flinching back in horror that seventy-eight million people (mostly white people and those who are so damn greedy and selfish that they could give less than a damn about anything else) elected this man, again. What she was hearing, I insisted, was an expression of deep distrust.

“I understand,” she said. “But I have been working on my own family history and the fact that we owned slaves, and I am trying to reconcile myself to that past.” It was a declaration that she was not one of them. Sentimentality indeed. I smiled and thought about how to break through the tremulous voice and wet eyes to tap the root.

Something about the dishonesty – about the abject refusal to confront who we are and what we have done without the security of sentimentality – makes this place so susceptible to charlatans and makes some who walk among us monstrous. And this stark realization cuts in all directions.

Trust has cracked wide open. Not that it was ever secured. But to see the steady stream of mediocre white people talking about merit, boasting of American greatness, ripping apart the foundations of the Second Reconstruction, and smugly decrying all criticisms of their white nationalism as racism in reverse makes one’s blood boil.

Call them out on their racism and they have the nerve to clutch their pearls. It is an old and effective strategy. Frederick Douglass encountered it.

The serpent may hiss, the crushed worm may turn, the wild beast may warn the hunter of dangerous pursuit, but you, colored man, must not say that there is even a possibility of danger to the midnight riders and murderers by whom you are slaughtered, lest our saying will be considered as an invitation to a war of races.

This is the rhetorical bind. Telling the truth about what is happening to us reveals too much about them, and all hell breaks loose.

And then, in addition, to hear supposed friends downplay it all in the name of economic matters and the so-called problem of identity politics causes the pounding in the skull. We see them bending the knee. We witness the quiet acquiescence as they attempt to direct our eyes to something more fundamental than us. Modern day copperheads. Bitterness and distrust coil up like snakes in a mating ball.

The country has paid a terrible price for its ongoing need to separate from Black people – from its inherent diversity. All because some insist that America, U.S.A., remain white. And those of us who must bear the brunt of such hubris are left to navigate the detritus. Hoping, praying really, that love can beat back the bitterness.

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