rage. it’s pent up in all of us. tempers flaring daily about traffic, political injustices as #45 seeks to make america great again with his travel ban and undercover tax plan, while his boy roy moore tells us that families were united during slavery. the question is, what do i do with this rage? how do i channel it into something that moves me forward? that speaks to the social conscience and puts my reality on center stage?

netflix and hulu are my escape from this foolery, but even there i struggle to find a series or movie that speaks to our collective conscience, the black experience. tonight i stumbled upon a show called “undercover” and sophie okonedo speaks to a group gathered outside a prison as a brotha is minutes away from lethal injection. she tells them,  “all i have is anger…this anger that i feel, here, will go to work.”

and that’s right where i am. all i have is anger. i’m weary of watching white men run the country, sexually harass women for decades with impunity, execute black men, teens, and adolescents with the law on their side, snatch promotions from the grasp of educated and over-qualified people of color. it’s exhausting but it’s also a time for us to rise up. to use the media as our weapon. i watch a lot of tv, a lot. and my rule is that anything i watch MUST have at least one black character. trying to  find us is difficult. we are relegated to roles as drug lords, gang members, convicts, baby mamas, sexual vixens, and rom-coms featuring black men chasing multiple women and black women fighting for the same man.  white characters are depicted as masters of industry, committing white collar crimes and deftly avoiding prosecution or as the great white hope come to third world country to rescue them from their tribal selves. white female protagonists are crime fighters granted a pardon despite multiple failures (claire danes in homeland). there is no genre closed to the white characters. rom-com, drama, comedy, thriller, horror, biopic. we need more writers cranking out content for black actors. hollywood has chosen its favorites and if we lucky, a black actor is given a crumb in a major motion picture but never is it an all black cast unless the director, writer, and producer is black (spike, ava, tyler).

i heard a quote the other day, “don’t complain, create.” and that is how i intend to channel my anger and put it to work.