I was at the Mumford and Sons concert at The Forum with my brother on Tuesday night when an incident I didn’t even directly witness left me furious.

Security was cordoning off a section on the outskirts of the general admission area and diverting all the concert goers to re-enter the floor area toward the back of the arena. Marcus Mumford and his buddies, we later witnessed, had decided to grace the rear of the crowd with their presence on the floor and needed a clear path to get there in the middle of the show. As a result, we had to walk a whole fifty feet further to get back onto the floor of The Forum. It was not an especially onerous imposition, and the security staff was pretty nice and reasonable about the process.

As my brother and I were walking away to take the proffered detour, he pointed to a guy in front of us and said, “That guy just dropped the n-bomb at the security staff as he walked away. What an asshole.”

“What? Wait why?” I couldn’t understand.

“I guess he was pissed at having to walk around to the back,” my brother replied.

“What did security do?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m not even sure they heard him. He only said it as he was walking away.”

Fucking coward. Fucking asshole.

“What the fuck?!? I’m going to go say something to him,” I said.

“Why?” my brother asked. “What the hell is that going to change? That jackass will get his karmic comeuppance soon enough.”

My brother was probably right. What could I have done to change this ignoramus’ mind? My first instinct was to go up to him and say, “We don’t say that to people in this country. Ever.”[1] My second instinct was to walk up and punch him in the face. I did neither. Instead, I just stared daggers at the prick for about fifteen minutes and seethed silently.

What was the best course of action? I still don’t know. Calmly pointing out the inappropriateness and hatefulness of his behavior would have had the best possible outcome of trying to reinforce that his behavior was utterly inacceptable and needed to change. Punching the fucker in the face would’ve made me feel better, but would have accomplished nothing outside of further fueling his hatred and getting me kicked out of the concert. It also got me thinking about the larger issue of the struggle for racial, or ethnic, or even gender equality and what the role of a white male should be. Was it my mantle to take up? Was my indignation righteous or somehow a construct of how I thought I should feel or wanted to feel? What role should I play in the struggle for equality and fairness when it isn’t my particular group that’s under attack?

Anger and Justice

Winston Churchill famously said that if you’re not more liberal when you’re younger, you have no heart; if you’re not more conservative when you’re older, you have no brain. As time passes, perhaps my brain cells are dying off at a more rapid rate because I feel more liberal and progressive (if such terms hold much water anymore) with each passing year. And I get angrier. With every mass shooting at a school or movie theater, I get increasing irate that we can’t even move the needle on sensible, fundamental gun control laws that the rest of the developed world take for granted. I get incensed that there are two different justice systems for those who have money and those who don’t. Those who fit a certain racial profile and those who don’t. I look at our exploding prison population and stare in horror at the statistics:

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/rates.html

What does this say about the state of justice in America? And when I hear yet another news report about an unarmed black man shot dead by the police, I’m first incredulous, then furious, then resigned to leave the country and not look back. I wonder how this untenable status quo persists, but I also wonder what the hell I can or should do about it.

I was listening to an NPR podcast[2] last week, and it mentioned the explicit connection between anger and justice. It mentioned that justice frequently comes from a sense of righteous anger which propels people to action. This got me thinking. I had been concerned, and maybe still should be, that I was getting too angry, too fired up, and too emotional over these seemingly “political” issues and that it wasn’t doing any good. When the podcast made this connection I thought about the various productive ways to channel anger into action to achieve justice: protesting, writing letters,[3] contacting politicians, and talking with and convincing others of the need to act. I also thought about unproductive ways to release this anger: yelling and screaming, finger pointing, and rioting and other forms of violence. I can understand these forms—I imagine they feel damn good[4]—while still not condoning them. Both Socrates and the Bible connect anger to catharsis and then the search for justice. This seems to me to be the best path forward: to channel our anger and righteous indignation in a direction that actually seeks and produces change. In getting us to talk and act and push for reform.

This conclusion, though morally instructive, still leaves me at a loss for what I should do when the fight at hand is not directly my own. I feel this most poignantly in the black lives matter debate. I asked my wise lunch companion[5] for her take as a minority female, and I thought she had a simple, succinct solution:

“Ask them what they need from you.”

I think I know the answer to this question—but I suppose I should still ask. How can I, as a white man, help advance the cause of black lives matter, or the cause of undocumented immigrants, or equal pay for women, when I am not black, nor an immigrant,[6] nor a woman? Stand up for what’s right. Call people on their bullshit or disingenuous or half-hearted attempts to “solve” the problem by addressing the superficialities and not the root causes. Use my degree in public policy and the pedestal it affords me to foster meaningful change. I suppose these are all good, productive starts. When I was doing aid work in Haiti or in Africa it was easy to see the good I was doing; it’s more difficult now that I’m back in the ivory tower (again) blogging comfortably from my cubicle.

The biggest thing that continues to hold me back is the fear of seeming disingenuous or hypocritical. Of being the guy who takes a selfie at a protest to show his friends that he was there. Being willing to say the right things, write the right things, but not being willing to do the right thing when it hurts. I know that Martin Luther King wanted me at his marches. I know that Gandhi wanted this white imperialist to be the change. But what would I be willing to sacrifice? Would I be willing to be arrested in a peaceful protest? I hope so. Would I be willing to accept lower wages if it meant wage equality? Again, I really want to say yes. What can I do to help out most? How can I best channel all this anger? I guess I should just ask. I guess I am. What can I do? How can I help?

[1] Or any country, for that matter

[2] I want to say it was Planet Money, but I can’t remember which episode unfortunately.

[3] And perhaps even blogs? Nah, that’s just narcissism

[4] Well, I can vouch for #s 1 and 2 having done my share (and then some)

[5] You may remember her from the Dating in LA blog

[6] At least not a recent one—we’re all immigrants in one sense or another. Even the Native Americans’ ancestors trekked over the Bering Land Bridge