Some Things You Don’t Get Over
Holding Onto Anger
Holding onto anger is never a good thing, but sometimes you can’t find a way to let go. There’s an incident that occurred over twenty-five years ago. I may go a year or more without it crossing my mind, but when I do, the anger rises as if it were today.
I don’t consider myself an angry person. I’ve been in two fights in my life, one of them in the fifth grade. Maybe it’s because of my height and size. I was always tall and an athlete, and probably looked like someone you wouldn’t want to fight. I write about serious topics, including racism and politics. People often comment that it must make me angry to research and write about injustice, but it honestly doesn’t. Maybe empathy isn’t my spiritual gift, or I skip past the anger stage into acceptance.
After finishing college, I pursued what I assumed was the typical career path. I accepted a job in Jacksonville, FL, with a Fortune 500 firm. Within a couple of years, I’d gotten married and bought a small home. I changed companies to another big firm and soon purchased a bigger home in a nicer neighborhood. A few years later, I got transferred to Orlando and ultimately purchased a house with a pool in Winter Park, Florida.
We lived two blocks from Winter Park High School, a highly rated public school. My son was about two when we moved there and attended the schools he was zoned for. It was an almost all-white neighborhood. We lived there without incident for several years.
During his senior year, my son still walked to school, though many of his peers drove. When I went to high school, very few kids had cars. At Winter Park High, that wasn’t the case. But we lived two blocks away, so there was no reason to drive. He could run to school in less time than it would take to drive and park.
My son’s first class during one semester was around 10:00 am. Most other kids were already at school, so he was a Black kid with a backpack walking towards school. A patrol car from the Winter Park Police Department stopped my son as he entered the school grounds and asked what he was doing. My son said he was on his way to class, but the officer refused to believe him. He had my son get into the back of the car, and they drove near the office. The officer let my son out and marched him to the office (in front of several classmates). The officer verified that my son was a student at the school and that his first class was as indicated. My son was allowed to go to class, but was late because of the time spent with the officer. The officer didn’t call my son a liar, but implied it several times during their interaction.
Later that day, my son called me at work to say what happened. While trying to tell him that everything was going to be okay. I was enraged and thinking about what I would do next. I called the Police Department and ultimately spoke to the officer’s supervisor. The Lieutenant tried to explain that the officer was merely helping my son get to school by offering him a ride, and there was nothing racist about his being stopped on his way to school. It was clear that nothing would come of my complaint, and I was concerned that if I continued, I might be putting a target on my son’s back.
I can’t explain the rage at being unable to protect my child from this happening. I thought I’d provided the right environment to keep him safe; instead, I’d placed him in the wolf’s lair.
I knew I couldn’t protect my children forever from racism. He now has children of his own and has to try to navigate that space. He lives in a county where the Sheriff bragged about shooting a Black suspect until they ran out of bullets.
“Quite frankly, we weren’t taking any chances. That’s all the bullets we had or we would have shot him more” and “I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that’s all the ammunition they had.” — Sheriff Grady Judd
Most of my personal experiences remain dormant, and if I do think of them, they don’t result in anger. Usually, by the time I finish writing about something that’s bothering me, the anger is gone. This time, it’s as if it happened today instead of 23 years ago. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s real.
Sometimes there’s just so much anger or sadness associated with an experience that it’s too deeply embedded to erase.
I , too am enraged. I feel Trump has not helped the situation. Jews and Blacks. I am Caucasian and have at times worked to level our inequality. Shame shame. We are all human but some of us are kinder than others. May that spread. Please know your anger is valid. Mine is too.