Thread by @SpencerPiston, I am angry.As a social scientist, what am I to do with [...]

I am angry.

As a social scientist, what am I to do with my anger?

And there's just so much of it.

I'm angry that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.

I'm angry that I can't appear to find a journalist able to write those simple words: Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.

I'm angry that the other 3 police didn't stop Chauvin.

I'm angry that he didn't stop himself. After people yelled "check his pulse" and that Floyd was unresponsive.

Or, even, way earlier.

I'm angry that the coroner's report referenced "any potential intoxicants."

I'm angry that Derek Chauvin had 18 complaints against him before this even happened.

I'm angry at those who still gave him the badge, the gun, the uniform, the legitimacy, the state-sanctioned monopoly on violence.

I'm angry that so many police kill so many people.

So many people.

Yes, especially black people.

Breona Taylor.

So many more.

I'm angry that so many people seem to want them to.

I'm angry that I can't go to protest all of this because I am with my 8-year-old daughter, and I don't want her to be pepper-sprayed by Boston bike police.

So what do I do with my anger?

As a social scientist, I could hide my anger.

The culture of my discipline encourages this.

To show anger risks appearing objective, not rational, not clear-thinking.

All the more so for political science professors. We are encouraged to leave our personal political preferences at the door when we enter the classroom.

And when we enter a faculty meeting.

By sharing my anger - even here, now - I risk eroding my intellectual authority, my credibility (much less so as a straight cisgender white man, slightly more so as a junior scholar).

I could try to fight my anger, sidestep it, circumvent it.

It can't be good for my mental health, can it?

Shouldn't I hope for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change?

Hey, the news is really depressing right now - so look at this picture of puppies!

But I am (trying to be) a (better) Buddhist.

So I sit with my anger.

I observe it.

I investigate it.

I ask what it is good for.

And I find: many things.

(1) Anger leads me to think BETTER, not worse, when it helps me reprioritize.

I have spent so much time adjudicating between various measures of racial prejudice.

What if I spent just as much time trying to figure out how to abolish our racist carceral state?

(2) Anger gives me purpose.

I'm not here just to get prestige, get tenure, get paid. But the culture of my discipline makes me eager to forget that. It makes me competitive. It sucks me in.

Anger anchors me. It is red, hot, dark, reassuring. It reminds me why I'm really here.

(3) When I share emotions with students -

yes, while still being fair! yes, while still telling them they are not obligated to feel the same way! yes, while telling them they don't need to agree with me!

- they see I care enough about them to tell them how I actually feel.

And when graduate students see that professors can share their emotions, they learn from me, I hope, that to be a social scientist you DON'T necessarily have to check all your values, beliefs, and emotions at the door.

(4) Finally, anger encourages me to try to change my discipline, instead of just playing the game.

And it needs to change.

Yesterday I learned that a grad student at a prestigious department asked via email how, "in response to recent events," and in light of white supremacy and racism, the department could "improve our mentorship, teaching, and scholarship for our Black students and colleagues."

The first response, from a full professor, a white man I believe, insisted that "both sides be represented. This is particularly the case when the calumny of 'white supremacy and racism' is being served up."

(How exactly did ideological diversity move this conversation forward?)

After another response, the chair, also a white man I believe, shut down the discussion:

"There is a time and place for general discussion of political issues, but the Department's listserv is not that place."

Oh, and it had this gem as well.

Then today I received this in my email inbox, authored by a political scientist.

So, yes.

We need to do better.

And anger shifts me from "can I get this published?" to "can I help make my discipline, my community of colleagues, do better?"

(5) Finally, since people think social media is only about symbolic performative posturing: I just donated my entire stimulus check to The Massachusetts Bail Fund.

This is what I've done because of my anger.

Not in spite of it. Because of it.

As a social scientist.

Epilogue:

For more on the politics of anger - and how race shapes who is allowed to show anger - see this fantastic book, written by an angry social scientist.

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