#poc rage

Sift through all the memories

You’re still the only one of your kind

You’re a rarity that is met with distain

You cannot scrub the shame away

The pigment left behind

From your foul blood

Is a constant reminder

That you are not the same

"To pathologize rage is to marginalize and silence it, assuming that it is unjustifiable, and that it lacks epistemic and moral merit. That danger would be intensified were we to hear Rabbi Izen’s story in isolation. Situations of unequal power relations have often facilitated the colonization of rage. This means at least two things: 1) the dominant group has often imagined the rage of the oppressed as a nearly uncontrollable destructive force lacking reason and therefore has sought to tame it, often violently; and 2) the dominant group has often systematized and institutionalized its own rage and therefore has enabled its rage to go by another, more socially acceptable name (law? order? justice? prison? capital punishment?). The ethical questions you’re asking us to grapple with, then, attune us to the relationship between rage and the disciplining force of power. Along those lines, I can’t help thinking about the historical differences between, say, white rage and black rage or men’s rage and women’s rage. Whose rage gets named as such? What are the effects of rage felt and enacted by people in different positions of power?"