Summary
After quickly defining the word "racism" (as not only a belief in the superiority of one race, but also the subsequent belief in that race's "right to dominance,") Lorde announces that her own response to racism is anger, and that being afraid of her anger has taught her nothing. For women to respond to racism requires them to respond to anger, since a life of racist oppression inevitably results in justified feelings of anger. Since anger is a response to real problems, then, it is a useful tool for detecting the presence of those problems in order to correct them—not in order to provoke guilt, which is an unhelpful response. In order to ground these ideas in real life, Lorde gives a few examples of white women's defensive or guilt-driven responses to racism, drawn from her own life. These include a white woman neglecting to correct her child after the child described Lorde's own baby as a "baby maid," and another interrupting a reading of poetry by women of color to read her own poem. When the academy ignores the needs of marginalized women by, for instance, refusing to waive conference attendance fees, it shows that its commitment to ending racism is entirely superficial. Quoting her poem "For Each of You," which promises that "Everything can be used/except what is wasteful," Lorde promises to talk about her experience with anger and its usefulness.
Anger is useless or worse if unexpressed: Lorde cites the example of white women who feel angry about a racist comment, repress their anger, and take it out on women of color. If expressed and listened to, though, anger solves problems—provided that the person to whom the anger is justifiably directed does not respond defensively with her own anger. Mainstream culture and media, Lorde says, is terrified that women will openly voice anger in response to racism, and especially terrified that white women will do so. Lorde distinguishes between hatred, directed at women by enemies who want to destroy their movements, and anger, directed by women at other women with the goal of positive change. Those who fear the anger of women of color more than they fear their own internalized racism are mistaken about which poses a greater risk to women as a whole. And, Lorde says, she will not quiet her own anger because it makes white women feel guilty, since guilt is actually a response to one's own inaction rather than to external expressions of anger. The way to assuage guilt is through action, not silence. However, most feminist groups haven't learned to use anger—while some have practiced expressing it, these usually homogenous groups have rarely learned to direct anger at one another and use it constructively.
Possibly, Lorde says, for women who have been traumatized by male violence, anger feels like an entirely destructive and justifiably frightening emotion. However, this response assumes that women are helpless. To use anger, women must realize that they have some degree of power, and then use the anger directed at them as a tool to help redirect that power. Lorde recalls letters that have been sent to her accusing her of disrupting progressive movements with anger and resentment. These letters, she says, fail to take into account the power of Black women's anger when it is met with openness. White women cannot risk becoming so attached to their victimhood that they forget their own ability to oppress women of color, Lorde says, just as she, a financially comfortable Black lesbian mother, cannot complacently participate in the oppression of poor women, closeted women, and others. In the end, though, Lorde says, Black women are only human—they're not destructive and they're also not perfect, forgiving angels. So, naturally, they feel anger, and will try to survive and defend themselves whether or not white women want to help. After all, Lorde says, Black women's anger is not responsible for the destruction of war, the corruption of power, or any of the other major problems facing society. It is only a response to those problems, and, if allowed, will help solve them.
Analysis
The topic of this essay, originally delivered in the form of a speech at an academic feminist conference, is highly abstract. The title promises to dwell on a difficult-to-define concept, anger, rather than any specific, discrete problem facing women. Moreover, the context of the speech's delivery forewarns that it will be restrained and academic in its tone. Lorde, though, is a poet, and she deals in literary language rather than traditional theoretical prose. As a result, her speech is a visceral one, meant to provoke precisely the constructive anger she defends. Here, form mimics and exemplifies content. While Lorde makes the claim that the usefulness of anger largely depends on the recipient's reaction rather than on the angry person's emotional presentation, she carefully calibrates her own expression of anger here in order to provoke and analyze certain emotional responses from her audience. Lorde first chooses expressions of anger likely to provoke feelings of guilt and defensiveness, which she identifies as unhelpful responses, in order to guide her audience through dealing with and rejecting those unhelpful responses. She then expresses anger in a way more likely to provoke pride, empathy, and openness. In this way, she subtly shows her audience how to identify and make use of helpful responses to anger while suppressing unhelpful ones.
In order to provoke defensiveness and guilt, Lorde delivers a stark, bullet-pointed list of various instances of racism directed towards her or other women of color, mostly by white feminist academics. The language she uses is minimal, unflinching, and prosaic, devoid of metaphor or rich imagery. Because of her audience—largely, she implies, white feminist academics themselves—these examples read as a more or less direct accusation, but Lorde makes this accusatory function even more explicit with the use of the second person. After describing a particularly shocking racist comment made by a child, Lorde says, "Your mother...does not correct you." The choice to use the second-person pronoun here in reference to a stranger's baby implicates every reader and audience member in that instance of racism. Lorde then quips, "fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and dis-ease." Here, the second person is even more direct, and audience members are likely to feel at least a little defensive. Lorde immediately pivots to an analysis of the uselessness of guilt and the necessity of openness in the face of anger. This means that a guilty-feeling listener or reader can, in real-time, practice interrogating her own defensiveness. Soon after, Lorde points out that every woman is in some way complicit in others' oppression and is therefore a justified target of anger. This means that even readers who have themselves been targets of the kind of academic racism Lorde describes are also driven to interrogate their own defensiveness in the face of other women's anger.
As the essay approaches its conclusion, Lorde's writing becomes more musical and figurative, drawing readers into its rhythm and making them feel like co-conspirators in anger rather than mere targets of it. Lorde's point has not changed—she still criticizes white academics and other privileged feminists—but her language motivates feelings of excitement rather than defensiveness in the very people she accuses. "We are not fiery fingers of judgment or instruments of flagellation..." she writes, using alliteration and dramatic, biblically-inflected language to build to an emotional climax. At the close of her essay, she explicitly tells readers where to redirect their emotions more productively, poetically reminding them of their "power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone." Therefore, over the course of this speech, Lorde doesn't just showcase anger: she showcases the different ways that targets of anger can respond emotionally, as if helping them practice for future experiences of feeling, or being recipients of, anger.
