A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [112]
What do we do with our anger? Pretending not to feel it doesn't help, nor do the inappropriate manifestations that necessarily follow this pretense. Damming the flow merely forces the fury to find side channels for expression, and as with the poisoned water I mentioned earlier, an outlet will always be found.
Here's what has me thinking about this: after too many years of being too sedentary, I'm trying to rekindle my love of basketball. All through high school and early college I used to play several times per week, only leaving the sport when high jumping swept me away. But as I've gotten older—I'm in my thirties now—my springs aren't so taut, and I no longer float over the bar. I no longer jump fences barely breaking stride, as I did in my late teens, nor do I jump them after serious consideration, as I did in my late twenties. Now I look for a gate, or, failing that, crawl under.
So far basketball hasn't been as much fun as I remember. I'm unwelcome on the courts, not because of age or inability (I haven't lost that much), but because I'm white.
Spokane's population is as purely white as any I've seen, and most of the local people of color I've spoken with tell stories of hatred and outrage, ranging from pointed looks in public to beatings by police. Nearly every African-American male I've taught at Eastern Washington University had either been struck or cursed by members of the Spokane Police Department. Last year I read that a white teenager attacked a black teenager in a parking lot; the white teen's mother ran to her car to grab mace and a knife. Returning to the fight, she maced the teen her son was attacking, then repeatedly stabbed him in the groin. Police refused to press charges. The receipt of hate mail by nonwhite students at Gonzaga Law School, here in town, has become something of a yearly tradition. Just across the border in Idaho squats the Aryan Nation's compound, a beacon for racists nationwide. It is against this backdrop that I took my sweats and basketball, my tattered shoes and rusty twenty-foot jumper, to a community gym.
I was one of the few whites in the building. Most of the players refused to acknowledge my presence, and even when I was playing they responded to my "Nice shot," or "Good pull" by looking away. As a teen I played basketball in the downtowns of many cities I visited: Chicago, New York, Watts. Never before had I been treated this way.
I sat out a game, atop a short row of stowed bleachers. The quality of play was good. The team running left to right, consisting of four black men and one white, scored nearly every time down the court. Although the white guy was nowhere near the best on the team, I knew from covering him that he was good— sag on defense and he'll sink a twenty-five footer: move out to guard and he'll glide by for an easy bucket. From the bleachers I watched him take the ball to the hoop and miss a contested layup. Two black men sitting on my left began to shout, "White fuckers ruin everything. Don't give him the ball. He'll just miss." As they were shouting, the white guy made a nice steal and pass to a black teammate, who missed an open layup. The men on my left didn't pause in their shouting, nor presumably perceive the contradiction between what they witnessed and what they said.
I wrote this in a letter to a friend, who wrote back, "Racism is tied intimately to power and class, don't you think? If you feel the world is against you, and you notice that the white man has power and money—which in our culture amounts to the same thing—I believe it would be tough for a person of color not to be racist."
I wasn't happy with this answer. I'd just wanted him to validate my feelings of not having been welcomed, and for him to tell