Anger is Not Hate

Dear Aldo,

There are people in this country, in our own neighborhood, who will try to dehumanize you. Because you’re black, because I am an immigrant who, when I was your age, fled from violence. Because of your full head of curly, beautiful hair, and because you naturally won’t see life exactly like they do. I can’t stop this, and neither can you. We can work to make this neighborhood and nation more inclusive places, but we can’t control other people’s hearts. This is a fact of life. 

People will say things about you as an individual and as a representative of a demographic that aren’t true. They will assert that you do not belong. Your reaction, rightfully, will be anger. Your predisposition will be to hate them in return, because hate begets hate. And hate, if you give in to it, molds you in their image. 

It’s unfair that you will have to carry the burden not only of their hate, but of resisting it in yourself, holding yourself to a higher standard. It is unfair but, my son, it is everything. 

It’s possible you’ll tire of hearing me talk about ‘ubuntu’, but I’m not going to stop. Because it, too, is everything. “I am because you are.” What this means, among so many other things, is that when we dehumanize others, we lose our own humanity. Son, don’t lose your humanity. Refuse to see those who hate you as anything other than human. They are like us - they hope and fear and love and laugh like us - and this makes the aggressions, both blatant and subtle, so much more heartbreaking. But when you remove a person’s humanity, you remove, too, their potential for change. And we cannot - we cannot - give up on humanity’s potential to change. 

It is not our responsibility to change them. They can, and must, change themselves. But we can’t let them change us. It’s not altruistic or heroic to see the humanity in other people. It’s necessary for your survival, for the survival of the bright and innocent light in your eyes.

Marginalized people have known all this for thousands of years. That we must resist being shaped by hate. But when the people in power, the people for whom the structures of society were built, hear us say this, they twist it, and they tell us that our anger is the same as hate. 

Anger is not hate. My son, do not let them lay claim to your anger. Because while hate says, “You are not human,” righteous anger cries, “You are human, how could you?” 

So take your time. Feel your anger, and your grief. Seeth with it if you have to. And then get up and get to work. There is good work to pour your pain into. We’ll get to that. But first, see your own humanity, and love it. See the humanity of those around you, and love them even if you grieve them. 

Aldo, I love you. I wish none of this was true. But we cannot change reality. We can only hold onto our humanity like it’s sacred. 

It is sacred.

Papa 

Dear John and James,

You’ve had ancestors on this continent for four hundred years. As long as Europeans have been here, we’ve been here. We came with big dreams and muskets and smallpox and Protestant zeal, and we molded this land in our image. 

So this nation, this county, this neighborhood will tell you that hate is your birthright. You’ll be tempted to hate people who look different than you, and you’ll be tempted to hate the ones that do look like you for making you culpable by association. But culpability is never just by association. 

You’re sturdy, strapping white boys. And you will walk into a room someday and see that people feel less safe because you’re there. And you will be tempted to hate everyone and everything that made it so. How could you, my little giggling boys who still nestle against me when we watch movies, loom so large. But you will. And I see it when I see anger in you. When you yell that you don’t want to go to school, or don’t want to go to bed. 

It’s easy for you - for us - to hate without realizing it. To reduce someone to their race or their religion or their gender, when in yourself and people like you you’re able to see the full flower of humanity. But, my sons, you have to resist this hate. I hope - I pray even though I don’t pray - that you’ll never engage in overt hate. But hate is insidious in people like us whose hate is so often called other things. Patriotism. Protectiveness. Good business. So you’ll have to proactively cultivate an ability to see humanity. It’s work, and I hope you work at it. 

Perhaps ironically, you too are the children of an immigrant parent. But you’re not who they’re afraid of, and we all know it, even if they won’t say it. Because your immigrant parent is a German Canadian, as white as a person can possibly be. And because you’re pale and freckle-faced and your hair is only a little bit curly, you don’t set off their otherness alarms. In other words, they don’t question your humanity. 

My sons, being a white man is like carrying a loaded gun. Fused to your arm, and you cannot set it down, no matter how much you long to, no matter how much you may come to rage at the gun, and wish it wasn’t there. My sons, do not use the gun. If you do, the ones who fused it there will win, even if it’s them you turn it on. Because you will have become them, and rejected your own humanity and theirs. 

When you see all this - and I hope more than I hope for anything that you do see this - your own anger will begin to feel dangerous. But do not let them lay claim to your anger. They don’t get to turn it into hate. Let love guide your anger, my sons, and stand for humanity wherever it is threatened, because that’s how you’ll save your own.

Boys, I love you. I wish none of this was true. But we cannot change reality. We can only hold onto our humanity like it’s sacred. 

It is sacred. 

Dad

by Andrew Bilindabagabo and Daniel Southwell