Rage in black and white is the color of America in blue states and red states. What is rage? rage is a strong feeling of anger that is difficult, seemingly impossible to control. Sometimes it is called "fit of anger," and may suddenly explode in violence

What is Black Rage?
      What is black rage? Black rage is primarily about the present, but it is also about history - centuries of injustices experienced by black people in America:  slavery and its legacy,  Jim crow, disfrachisement, black people being the last hired, if hired, and the first fired. It is also about police brutality, mass incarceration, especially of young black men and boys, unemployment of black people while at the same time immigranrts, including undocumented immigrants,are employed on the pretext that they are during work that Americans won't do. That is a BIG LIE. Even white people who boast of being superior to other people would willingly work on those jobs if they could not find other jobs.  May I inquire? "Who worked on those jobs during the first-half of the twentieth century and before?" I recall when I was a teenager i cut lawns and fields with an unmotorized lawn mower to earn money. May I add, all day. Blacks are angry about being poverty-stricken in the mdist of affluency and race-based justice.

What is White Rage?  
      White rage is really "white fear." Fear that the "good old days" made so in part by exploitation  have gone and cannot be retrieved. White rage is about the feelings of white people, especially of white men, not so much about history as is true for black people, but about the present and what the future seems to portend for them and their offspiring. White men see white women and in some instances African Americans and some instances non-American citizens having advantages they do not have, especially in the labor market. Technology has not been a friend to the less-educated white males who have lost their jobs and are working on jobs that pay less than they previous received. It has made it tougher for them to be employed on jobs that oncce gave them security, including retirement benefits. White males feel like they have been shortchanged and at their expense women, African Americans and minorities have been favored.
       At least 20 percent of the nation's 90 million white men have ben pushed to the sidelines. Millions of them have checked out from mainstream American life, a reality that has profound consequences for the economy, children and families, civic life, religious life and politics. Women and Blacks in politics are a game-changer that seems to adversely impact white males.                               w     White men are angry as Hell. Are they going to take it? That remains to be seen. What can they do about it? That's a qurstion for another discussion.
      The mortality rates among less-educated, middle-aged white men and white women, many of them still too young to retire, but not to die, were about 20 percent higher than they were in 1998, acording to a research finding. With the future of America becoming more inclusive and diverse, less gender conscious and attuned to the employment  of people of any skin color or skin  hue who have the skill to perform the task this trend toward self-destructivenes is likely to continue for white males, in particular.
     During the nineteenth century it was not  unusual to hear people say regarding the British Empire: "the Empire on which the sun never set," which decribed an Empire  that was so extensive that there was always at least a part of the territory that was in daylight." In the nineteenth and three-quarters of the twentieth century we might say, "the power of white males cannot be decreased by women, Africian Americans, technology, out-sourcing or any other phenomenon." But like the British Empire that is so small today that on a less-sunny day it scarcely attracts the light fo day, white males' power to control society, is signficantly diminished and shared with women, black people and minorites. (I tend not to refer to black people as a minority just as white people tend not to refer to themselves as a majority.  It is worth noting that white people alone can be the majority whereas all the rest of people can constitute the minority, singlar or plural).

When full-blown black rage encounters full-blown white rage what a time that will be. I can only hope that it will be like "when love meets justice." Whatever else that will mean it will or can mean that black rage and white rage will dissolve in equality - equality of opportunity,  equality of participation and equality of achievement,  for all.

Copyright 2016 by Uriah J. Fields.