It is far easier to feel anger at those you want to blame for hurting that person.
But the only person this helps is you.
I was watching a middle aged black woman downtown today scream her anger at the world. And I thought how hard it would be to meet her where she is at. Whatever happened to her, I can’t imagine it. Some things, you can’t process. She was pushed out of her self, out of her body, into some other place where the pain was less.
And I was thinking: how hard it would be to ponder that black culture has been declining for 40 or more years, to where the sheer volume of pain and suffering is beyond comprehension. Who wants to feel that? Who wants to see that?
Far easier to find scapegoats, and feel rage. Rage feels much better than sorrow, even if it is to perception what a forest fire is to a lighter. You cannot tell it where to go, and it does not stop where it was supposed to, or should have.
100 or more young black men are killed by other young black men for every one killed by a cop, and the number is probably a thousand for every one truly unjustly killed.
But this number is a source of sorrow. Who wants to live there? Only decent, well meaning people would want to live there.
Where are they?