To rage is a privilege

Let’s talk about anger and privilege. Before I go any further - white privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard, it means your skin tone isn’t of the things making it harder! There’s plenty of other privileges (socio-economic, male, heterosexual cisgender, able-bodied) but white privilege is perhaps the most enduring throughout history.??

For most of us, our recent outrage is a privilege. We’re lucky our boiling rage has only come to the surface now. It likely didn’t come for Grenfell, the bedroom tax, cuts to mental health services, food banks… the list is long. Many people have been angry and fighting for years. People forced out of their homes. Disabled people whose benefits have been cut. People in poverty who have to choose between food and electricity.??

Take a pause today and ask yourself “Where does my anger come from?” If you’re like me, it’s likely to be from a place of relatively safe middle-class privilege. Ask yourself, who else is suffering? Who has been suffering this whole time and I didn’t notice? How does this affect them? What can I do???

All of this means on the days you feel strong you have to stand up for the people who can’t; because they are tired, or ill, or poor, or don’t have the internet, or can’t speak English. ??

There is no simple answer but we progress when we ask powerful questions. We move forward together when we sit with the discomfort our own answers bring us.??

“Yes, as a black woman, I am proud to see the collective rage of women being touted as a pivotal turning point in our history. But we cannot forget that the privilege of rage is not given to all of us. We can’t celebrate anger without specifically and deliberately acknowledging the ways it’s been used to control and suppress black women. That includes having uncomfortable conversations about “white female fragility” (and the tears that often follow). In the end, the revolution will only happen when all of us get to be furious”?Kimberly Seals Allers (this quote was in reference to the #metoo movement)?

This article was originally published here.