Emotional alchemy (part 2): the racial dimensions of anger, fear, hope and pride + why zoom is so exhausting and what can we do about it?
+ The Spike and Sen. Sinema + an astonishing murmuration
ICYMI: Community Change Action’s Dorian Warren and Deepak published a piece in The American Prospect, The ‘Progressive Multiplier’: How Democrats Can Defeat Trumpism. And in a new occasional section, the sweet, improbable Platypus deploys its little-known venomous spike this week against the 58 Senators (mostly millionaires) who had the gall to vote against a $15 dollar minimum wage. And Deepak dishes on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an old acquaintance who just keeps getting worse.
Last week, we explored the repertoire of emotions – the “structure of feeling” – in LGBT communities that shaped their response to the AIDS epidemic. Emotional alchemy by movement groups transformed raw emotions like grief and anger into actions that forced the government and the culture to change in profound ways. This week, we continue to explore the role of emotions in politics, particularly through the prism of race. What if the very emotions we feel and the texture of our inner lives depend on our positioning in racial hierarchies? What if different groups respond to the same emotions differently, so that, for example, anger motivates some groups to vote but not others? How have white power groups channeled rage over decades, culminating in the violence that engulfed the Capitol on January 6th? And what are the proven techniques that social movements use to overcome fear – the biggest obstacle to sustained mobilization? These are crucial and practical questions for organizers and for progressive politics.
Reading Recommendations
For obvious reasons, we’ve been reading historian Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, which makes the case that “all corners of that movement were inspired by feelings of defeat, emasculation and betrayal after the Vietnam War and by social and economic changes that seemed to threaten white men.” She argues that this rogue’s gallery of leaders and groups is in fact a social movement that developed a strategy of “leaderless resistance” in the early 1980s bent on overthrowing the government. From this historical perspective, the “splintering” of far-right groups described by Neil MacFarquhar in the New York Times on March 1st may instead be viewed as a reversion to the norm. The centralization and coordination of these efforts in the Trump years is the development that deserves the deepest examination. (There’s a good Drinking with Historians conversation with Belew in which she talks about the central role of women in building this social movement and points out that the greatest single correlate for Klan resurgence historically has been foreign wars).
A brilliant book by political scientist Davin L. Phoenix, The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics, argues convincingly that “The story of America cannot be told without talking about anger,” and that “racial differences in emotion translate to racial disparities in political participation.” Phoenix analyzes Hillary Clinton’s defeat through the lens of the “anger gap” and suggests crucial strategies for defeating Trumpism and building a new Rainbow Coalition politics. His approach is unconventional and runs against the grain of mainstream political practice and messaging, but it’s profound and persuasive nonetheless.
The academic literature about politics and emotion points to anger as a powerful motivator for political action. But Phoenix argues:
The societal fear of black anger creates an interesting – and politically impactful – irony. Being saddled with fears of legal retribution or social stigmatization from seeing red while black actually contributes to a depressing of the anger African Americans express over politics. White Americans, on the other hand, facing no such adverse effects of seeing red, express and act upon their anger in politics with greater frequency and intensity . . . I can reframe the surge in black turnout during the Obama era as a reflection of the uniquely mobilizing effects of positive emotions on black political behavior relative to whites. And I can contextualize the rise of Trumpism within the long history of white Americans leveraging political anger toward electoral behavior more effectively than racial minority groups . . . While African Americans exhibit an anger gap in politics, they also demonstrate an enthusiasm advantage. . . these [positive] emotions [hope and pride] exhibit a stronger mobilizing effect on black participation relative to whites. . . .
Because white anger is often legitimized and championed by the same discourses, practices, and actors that demonize black anger, white people are uniquely able to engender anger over politics and translate it to effective political action. . . .
[W]hile anger effectively moves white Americans to conventional playing fields of action, from the voting booth to the town halls, anger expressed by African Americans translates more strongly to confrontational and system-challenging domains of action, from the front lines of protest to the sites of marches and demonstrations. Thus, while the anger gap carries consequences for turnout, its effect is most keenly felt in the domain of black activism, which has long played an instrumental role in black politics.
One of the interesting mechanisms Phoenix proposes to explain the “anger gap” draws on social psychology. All of us filter threats through our pre-existing social identities. Powerful people – for example middle class and wealthy white people of all political persuasions – expect to have their issues taken seriously and to win. When they feel angry, they mobilize in a political system that they assume works or should work in their interests. If, on the other hand, you don’t feel that your social group is powerful, a threat narrative (like “Trump is really terrible and racist”) is likely to make you feel vulnerable, fearful, and resigned – or to seek venues for making your voice heard outside normal political processes, like mass protest. Because of vastly different levels of confidence in the extent to which the political system can be made to work for them, whites channel anger into traditional politics and protest while Black people are more likely to work in social movements that challenge the system itself. This explains in part the different responses of racial groups to Trumpism, but also to Bernie Sanders and Occupy who invoked the threat of the 1% and corporate dominance of America:
For many African Americans, the image of people working long hours and barely scraping by while an elite class thrives off their effort represents not a departure from a satisfactory norm to which they feel entitled. On the contrary, this image represents the norm itself . . . It is that very sense of indignation – rooted in having a sense of entitlement to a good from which one is being denied – that gives anger its mobilizing power.
There are a number of other sparkling insights in Phoenix’s book, including that:
Anger inspires risk-taking, confidence, and focus when tackling obstacles, while hope inspires creativity and imagination. Hope is the inverse of anger, and “unlike anger, which reflects a person’s sense of her capacity for change, hope inspires optimism for change regardless of the individual’s capacity to realize it.”
Pride is powerfully effective in stimulating all forms of political action among African Americans, in part because it draws on confidence in the community’s ability to make change rather than the receptiveness of the dominant system to change.
Trump’s success is “rooted in no small part in his ability to leverage the power of white anger,” and so too has Bernie Sanders’ appeal been founded on mobilizing anger within his cadre of loyal white supporters. ( And white people with college degrees are more likely to express anger than white people without degrees).
Younger Black people report much more anger about politics than older Black folks, and there may be an important generational change afoot that promises to upend longstanding dynamics.
Latinx people and Asian Americans report an anger gap and enthusiasm advantage similar to that seen in African Americans (for example, reporting less anger during the 2016 election despite Trump’s racism).
Fear does not motivate political action – it primes people to seek more information – with one notable exception: Asian Americans, for whom it is uniquely motivating, probably because of their historical positioning as “other” regardless of immigration status.
Perhaps the most important finding is that among all groups of people of color one emotion – anger – fosters the greatest level of solidarity between African Americans, Latinx people and Asian Americans. (Anger does not have a cross-racial solidarity inducing effect on white people). Pride on the other hand weakens the bond between groups of color needed to forge solidarity. Therefore, “those aiming to build coalitions across race should work to get people of color seeing red.”
This last point creates a “vexing dilemma”: among people of color, pride may work to motivate turnout but depress solidarity; anger motivates protest and solidarity across groups of color, but it doesn’t motivate traditional forms of political action like voting. What’s the solution? Democrats’ consistent unwillingness to appeal to Black anger or to legitimate Black grievance, contributes to the asymmetry in the emotional efficacy of anger. Phoenix concludes, “If Black people are to truly be fully representative players in the sphere of political competition, space needs to be created to allow them to express anger without fear of stigma, demonization or surveillance.” Democrats must “disrupt the socially imposed boundaries placed on each minority group in order to fully engender and legitimize their anger over politics.” And they must stop defaulting to “a rhetorical and outreach strategy based on a conventional wisdom that in reality applies only to white partisans.” Indeed.
Phoenix shows convincingly that understanding the inner emotional life of people you seek to engage is crucial to success in politics and movements. His work is extremely relevant for the challenges we face in what is likely to be an era of sustained white rage. Phoenix’s brilliant book deserves wide attention. There is a good podcast interview with him, and he wrote a good op-ed for the New York Times, both of which we recommend, but the book itself is rich with subtle insights and well worth the effort.
In his new book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger, Lama Rod Owens, an increasingly well-known queer Black Buddhist teacher, explores issues related to the interior emotional experience of oppression. He proposes that consciously working with anger can be the path to spiritual liberation. The book covers a vast terrain, including how social oppression is experienced emotionally; the embodied nature of emotion and trauma; the dynamic of “emotional labor” first explored by feminist theorists; specific meditation practices to work with anger; and the ways white anger constrains the expression of Black people.
When I am rooted in love, anger reveals itself as trying to point us to our hurt; and when I am taking care of my hurt and loving it at the same time, the energy of anger becomes and energy that helps me to cut through distractions and focus on the work that needs to get done. . . . We and the world struggle because we have misused our anger by reacting to it instead of partnering with the energy of anger to address the roots of why we hurt.
Finally, Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff explore how movement activists overcome the fear of violence and repression in “Emotion Work in High Risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U.S. and East German Civil Rights Movements” (a chapter in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements). The authors identify
eight main encouragement mechanisms . . . which were operative in these movements. Six of these mechanisms were found, more or less, in both movements: (1) the intimate social networks that underpinned these movements; (2) the dynamics of mass meetings and other communal gatherings of movement participants; (3) the strong identification of activists with the movements, grounded in a belief in both their righteousness and inevitable victory; (4) shaming and “degradation ceremonies”; (5) formal training in the techniques of civil disobedience; and (6) mass-media coverage of movement activities and protest events. Two additional encouragement mechanisms were found on a significant scale only in the U.S. case: (7) the possession of firearms; and (8) the belief among some movement participants in what we might term divine protection.
Savvy Corner
Gara LaMarche (Democracy Alliance), Maurice Mitchell (Working Families Party) and Rahna Epting(MoveOn.org) had a scintillating conversation about “Lessons From the Frontlines in 2020 Battles for Democracy and Black Lives” in a series about leadership sponsored by CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies and Colin Powell School at City College. They kept it real about the challenges of leadership but were profoundly inspiring too – and reminded us of the centrality of organizing to social change. You can watch here.
Recently, Deepak hosted a conversation with Cristina Jimenez (Former ED, United We Dream) and Nse Ufot (New Georgia Project) exploring the strategic and emotional dimensions of leadership, including questions of trauma and healing and also the role of joy in social change. The event was sponsored by CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies and the Colin Powell School at City College. You can watch here.
Lorella Praeli and Community Change sponsored a soft-launch for a new book Immigration Matters: Visions, Strategies and Movements for a Progressive Future co-edited by Ruth Milkman, Penny Lewis and Deepak. The discussion featured Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Cristina Jimenez and Cecilia Munoz. You should watch! And also check out Harry’s two-minute video about the book.
The Spike
The 1.9 trillion Covid relief bill is an *enormous* victory that will put thousands of dollars in people’s pockets and reduce child poverty by nearly 50%. Credit goes to President Biden, progressive champs in the Democratic Congress, everyone who organized to turn Georgia’s Senate seats blue and movement groups who pushed the envelope.
There are two major disappointments –the exclusion of millions of immigrants from desperately needed relief and the failure to enact a $15 minimum wage. We are appalled that 58 US Senators (mostly millionaires) voted against Sen. Sanders’ amendment to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. The list included eight Democrats: Carper (DE), Coons (DE), Hassan (NH), King (ME, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats), Manchin (WV), Shaheen (NH), Sinema (AZ), and Tester (MT). We honor the incredible movement of workers that made $15 – once thought to be a crazy idea by mainstream pundits – a staple of policy discussions and a reality in states, cities and workplaces around the country. We share SEIU President Mary Kay Henry’s outrage that so many Senators would vote for poverty wages.
Deepak has a long acquaintance with Sen. Sinema dating back in the early 2000’s when he spent time in Arizona supporting immigration activists pushing back against the crazy. Kyrsten was at the time a far-left, anti-war, progressive activist connected to the Green Party who was known around the state as a strong ally to immigrants under siege from a crazy state legislature and armed militias who roamed around (and crashed our meetings) with impunity. Deepak and Kyrsten saw each other at immigration movement events – she was sometimes the only white person to be seen at them. When Kyrsten called to tell Deepak she was running for Congress and wanted his support, he distinctly remembers chuckling and saying to her, “Kyrsten, there’s no way a radical, bisexual, anti-war, immigrant rights activist is going to Congress from that district. But I’ll help anyway as long as you promise to be a fierce champion for immigrants if you get there.” She got to Congress and promptly began taking a series of horrendous anti-immigrant votes. Then she called back to ask for support. Deepak let loose, saying that she had betrayed all the immigrant families she had promised to champion and whose stories she had heard and committed to honor. She said, “I gotta do what I gotta do” and used the excuse of hiring a prominent immigrant rights activist who worked briefly on her staff. Kyrsten reminds Deepak of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous character Jay Gatsby who was driven by endless personal ambition and constantly reinvented himself in improbable ways, with a pit of emptiness where one might expect to find a soul. The future of Arizona and America depend, thankfully, not just on folks like Kyrsten but on courageous workers and organizers who are about something far bigger than themselves.
Delights and Provocations
This astonishing murmuration of starlings was captured by an Irish Times photographer. Wow.
On the theme of last week’s issue, we watched It’s a Sin a five part series about the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990’s in London. The first few episodes especially were gripping and brought to life the swirl and arc of emotions – fear, shame, pride, anger and compassion – that move us to act.
There’s new peer-reviewed Stanford research that shows us not just that Zoom fatigue is real, but four reasons why and how we might address it. You can read the short summary of the research here.
As you’ve probably noticed, The Platypus is a big fan of giving people money – lots of it, without conditions or lectures. We think it’s crucial to freedom, human flourishing, worker rights, racial and gender justice and, well, pretty much everything we care about. The inclusion of the expanded refundable child tax credit in the Covid-relief package is a big step forward – though its temporary nature is a problem. When it expires a year from now, we should replace it with something permanent and simple like this. And now, there’s compelling evidence, if you need convincing, from this academic study about the Stockton Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment that more cash improves poor people’s lives.
It is remarkable how different the German response to the rise of a far-right movements has been to that of the U.S. government, which has generally coddled them. From the New York Times: “For the first time in its postwar history, Germany has placed its main opposition party under surveillance, one of the most dramatic steps yet by a Western democracy to protect itself from the onslaught of far-right forces that have upset politics from Europe to the United States.”
Finally, this week we’ve been listening to Caetano Veloso, Alma Tropicalia and a whole lot of disco because, well, disco rules.