Why Anger Belongs in the Revolution

I think that white people view people of color via a standard that they usually themselves cannot live up to. In other words we have to be calm and kind to the people who were violent and vicious to us—”us” meaning entire countries—specifically referring to generational and national pain, etc.

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And when you come from a country that has suffered severely you end up with PTSD due to colonization, capitalism, and pure exploitation of our Browner, poorer countries, I think people expect us to be grateful to even be allowed into the U.S.

But I’ve been angry in my revolution. My anger is righteous, and it comes from a place of knowing how shitty the USA has consistently been to my people, generationally.

We know that:

— Indigenous communities were strategically almost eliminated by colonizers through the creation of mestizos, this new breed was supposed be an “improved version” but not “good enough” to be FULL Spaniard;

— the United States government will continually intervene in our civil wars or create them to support the side that is most willing to give more lands to the U.S. government and more access so our resources;

— they even will ignore the murdering of human rights defenders and activists in our country if we aren’t already politically aligned with the United States;

— our communities have been sterilized and tested on for the benefit of Western medicine;

— “Western” as in white, “western” as in rich, “Western” civilization has needed us to sacrifice ourselves for the “greater good”; and

— countries that had nationalist agendas meaning that they put their own people first have continually been made to feel like an enemy of the U.S.

I’ve been angry and I’m staying angry, because despite all your good intentions and how blameless you feel as one person, if I unwillingly half to carry a nation’s hurt from what richer whiter countries have done to us, then in your comfort and in the safety in your countries that have basically the monopoly on the big guns and the big bombs, it is common human apathy to expect you to willingly carry your nation’s earned self-condemnation.

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And if we can both come to a place where we understand that we are products of power, where there’s some of us who were hurt and there’s some of us who have benefited from the power, then maybe I will stop being angry.

But when I go into spaces and ask that people acknowledge that they are benefiting from national greed, and I am told that maybe if I was nicer and less angrier than people would listen to me, all I actually hear is: “I do not feel personally responsible though I am personally benefiting from your hurt but I expect you to be nicer about it”—as if you have not already taken everything including my dignity!

And in my revolution there is anger because in your complacency there’s blame-shifting.

In my revolution there will be anger because the U.S. put an embargo on my country when I was a child, which meant that at 5 years old, I knew starvation intimately. I know what hunger feels like and since kids are still going hungry all across the world, I’m staying angry. I have revolutionary anger because I also know how comfortable I am now in my suburb, air conditioning, and a pantry full of organic food and this is only possible because I’m in the USA, and get to inherit this. I get to tell you that the national trauma I carry comes as a consequence of the national abundance here, and I get to be angry that I was ever a starving kid in third world country.

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I get to stay angry because people expect us to be grateful to even be allowed into the U.S. But you forget that you’ve made the U.S. the only “safe” place to live. My family did not want to move here, my family had to move here. I get to stay angry.

In my revolution there is anger because you seems to fail to acknowledge on a daily basis how much of my life was at stake in Nicaragua for your safety. Literally.