Overcoming anger requires reflection, real change
October 15, 2004
BY DAVID CRUMM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Anger is so deeply ingrained in human life that it is unlikely to disappear, but it does seem to move in waves around the world. Scholars and historians say it is possible to calm those waters.
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The Free Press asked six people who have studied anger from a variety of perspectives to suggest ways to overcome the anger that's gripping America.
Their prescriptions aren't easy. Each one requires self-discipline, reflection and hard work.
.Wise up and stop following every selfish impulse.
That's the recommendation of novelist Elmore Leonard, who lives in Bloomfield Township. After years of writing Westerns and crime novels, he knows something about the violent misbehavior that's often linked to anger in America.
"There are a lot of painful things in our past, like the massacre at Sand Creek, that don't make any sense. How could people have done something like that?" Leonard said. "Well, I think what happens is that people get swept up in the times in which they're living. And they don't stop to reflect. They follow their impulses. How else could you ever explain those old photos of people standing around smiling at the site of a lynching?
"I'm almost finished with a new book in which one of the characters is the son of an oil millionaire in Oklahoma in the 1930s, and he decides that he wants to be Public Enemy No. 1, like the bank robber John Dillinger. This guy doesn't see what's wrong with that and, like a lot of people, he doesn't think he's going to be held accountable.
"More than anything else, I think the problem is that a lot of people are dumb." ( :>) Here we go again - CB)
.Look more closely at places in America we prefer to ignore, because that's where anger often surfaces.
Historian Howard Zinn, based in Massachusetts, has devoted his life to writing about the forgotten facets of American life.
"We've got national amnesia," Zinn said. "Entire parts of our population are invisible. For example, the neighborhoods where many poor black people and poor white people live are ignored. Take a walk through neighborhoods in your city, and you'll see areas that look like a war passed through the region. Because poor people are invisible, we don't think about them in our planning for our country.
"One of the most important things we must do is break out of this pattern of ignoring whole parts of our country until something striking happens there."
A high school textbook he wrote, "A People's History of the United States," focuses on those largely unreported parts of U.S. history. This fall, the new companion volume, "Voices of A People's History of the United States," offers more than 100 original statements by American Indians, slaves, immigrants, union organizers and others.
.Finish the work of the civil rights movement by honestly confronting the scars left by our anger over race.
The Rev. Edgar Vann Jr. of Second Ebenezer Baptist Church, one of Detroit's most politically influential pastors, said that as he works on nonprofit boards and coalitions around metro Detroit, he sees too many people who assume that racial equality has been achieved and that people who fled Detroit have no responsibility for years of maintaining racial barriers.
"We've learned to talk politely to each other and to focus on diversity and look at other ethnic groups who are living in our communities now. But that's just a form of denial. It's an illusion of inclusion that causes people to say, 'Hey, we've settled all our problems. Hey, let's just get over this. Forget about it.'
"But there is still a great chasm of racial misunderstanding between us in this country. It's the big elephant in America's living room. We've learned how to live our lives with it sitting right there. We know how to move around it and not touch it. I think it's time that we finally wrestled with this elephant."
.Ensure that women play equal roles at all levels of American life.
Bible scholar and feminist author Jane Schaberg, who lives in Detroit and teaches at the University of Detroit Mercy, said there's justifiable anger when such a huge part of the population has not attained equal status.
"Women are over half of the population in the U.S., but only 13 percent of members of Congress," she said. "Many women are angry about injustices such as poverty; lack of adequate health care and child care and education; sexual harassment and discrimination; endangered or denied reproductive rights and gay and lesbian rights; violence against women, children and animals; damage to the ecosystem; job and pay inequity; the greed of patriarchal capitalism, and war."
When considering the origins of anger in America, the struggle over women's rights is not an isolated issue, Schaberg said. Many issues are "tightly braided together," she said, including sexism, racism, classism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism and militarism. "When you deal with one of these systems of domination, you deal with them all."
.Learn about our country's regional cultures and work to preserve them.
If we don't, they'll soon vanish beneath sprawling development, large-scale commercial agriculture and brand-name retail centers -- and anger in the American heartland will continue to rise, said University of Michigan anthropologist Tom Fricke. "When people think about the Great Plains, they think of these wonderful yeoman farmers. But the truth is that most farmers are deep in debt, and family farms are disappearing. As they go, a whole complex network of relationships and history is vanishing, too.
"These are very smart, hard-working people, but their frustration is palpable. It's like they're skidding across the ice toward a stone wall and, when they hit, their communities fall apart.
"It doesn't have to be like that. One thing Americans love about traveling in Europe is that from one valley to the next, the towns are different, and the culture is different. That's because European countries work hard to preserve entire communities, entire sets of relationships. We need to learn from that example."
.Look deeply into the human spirit and acknowledge that faith often fuels anger.
Ancient sages knew what they were doing when they ranked anger among the seven deadly sins and urged people to beware the temptation, said the Rev. Alfred Bamsey, a retired United Methodist minister in Ann Arbor who consults with religious groups nationwide on conflict resolution.
Anger and faith often are intertwined, he said. Some religious groups preach disturbing messages that divide people and cause friction. But a more common problem in thousands of congregations is that men and women often show up in church, carrying with them their confusion and rage about other problems in their lives.
"I hear from pastors all the time who say that people are moving across the country, switching denominations, moving into churches with certain expectations," Bamsey said. "People start getting noisy about what they expect."
Their discontent spills over into feuds within religious groups themselves, often pitting traditionalists against those who no longer see much distinction between denominations.
"This is very difficult stuff. But Americans need to stop and figure out new ways to hold conversations with each other -- especially with people who are different. People do need to be heard, but people also need to listen. If we do enough of that, over time, we can make a difference."
Contact DAVID CRUMM at 313-223-4526 or crumm at freepress.com.