Nieman’s 80th Anniversary Reunion Weekend

Jeneé Osterheldt:  Hi, my name is Jeneé. I’m your friendly newsroom angry black woman. The one that gives you hugs and sends you affirmations, but also speaks uncomfortable truths in an effort to create change.

I do things like call a liar a liar, a sexist a sexist and a supremacist a supremacist—even when it’s your president. For that, they call me angry. Like injustice, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and — you know— all the inhumanity shouldn’t make us angry.

“Why you got to be so brash,” readers ask. “Say it differently,” they demand. “That’s not the right way to protest.” “Journalists are supposed to be fair.” Since when did fair mean nice? The truth is the truth.

I used to run from anger, actively expressed opposition, madness. I was barely out of kindergarten the first time I tried to escape it. Momma said I rolled my eyes before I could even talk. Fact. Then she attributed this trait to my blackness. “There you go with that black girl attitude,” said the white woman who birthed me, the lady I loved with a face like mine and a war inside her.

It was there, that the shrinking began. Be small, don’t stand up for yourself, I thought. If you just make yourself less than, maybe you can get by. That shit ain’t work. Holding it in hurt.

James Baldwin said, “To be a Negro in this country and be relativity conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” So you learn to channel it. Audre Lorde wasn’t lying when she said, “Focus with precision. It can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.”

For me, that meant writing. First it was poems and short stories, and then came journalism, a place to be entirely me and speak the truth. A place where I had the power of the curator to hold space for that which that needs to be seen, felt and recognized. Sweet voice for the voiceless. No code switching, hip hop in print, gangster rapper.

As it turns out, America doesn’t like that. No kneeling, no disagreeing, no wanting your basic rights to live freely. To want that, and be black and female, well, that makes you angry.

Of the thousands of emails, comments, tweets, letters and voice mails I’ve gotten over the last sixteen years, it’s not the death threats or the slurs that stand out. It’s the word “angry.”

I can be sitting in my bed on a Saturday morning eating my Lucky Charms and watching “Harry Potter” living my best black life and I’ll get an alert. Someone wants to know why I’m angry. It must be so hard being so angry, so many readers love to say. The worst part is, this isn’t always the raging supremacist talking to me this way. It’s the co-worker with black friends who questions your ethics when you say, “Trump is a supremacist.”

Or, the boss who said you were angry and forgot who your people were when you asked why you needed to hear a ninety-second racist voice mail. It’s the white feminist who can’t hear you because your tone is too harsh. It’s the liberals who voted for Obama, but want you to say, “All lives matter.”

These folk are far more dangerous than loud talkers, because they don’t even realize how insidious racism is and the way it’s washing by us all through them. They use the words “angry” and “mad” to shrink me, invalidate me, erase me, make me over as their sapphire, and render me powerless.

The thing is, I have a right to be mad about a system built on supremacy. Shouldn’t we all be angry about injustice? Why weaponize my desire for freedom? Here I am, with my black girl attitude and face like my momma’s.

I’m a journalist. My job is to speak truth to power and I do so unapologetically. Unapologetic doesn’t mean you don’t apologize when you’re wrong. Unapologetic means not apologizing for who you are.

Here I am. My name is Jeneé. I like to hug and give affirmations. I’m your friendly newsroom angry black woman. You should be one too. Silence about our country will kill us long before they do. Thank you.

Final slide: To turn aside from the anger of Black women with excuses or the pretexts of intimidation is to award no one power — it is merely another way of preserving racial blindness, the power of unaddressed privilege, unbreached, intact. Guilt is only another form of objectification. Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity. Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people’s salvation or learning. But that time is over. My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I’m going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity. — Audre Lorde