The First Pride Was a Riot: The Importance of Anger in Furthering a Movement

It's Pride month and this means that everyone is gearing up for a month of rainbow everything and pride parades. But, this month, it's slightly overshadowed by an issue of Civil Rights which cannot be ignored any longer and should not have been ignored for so long. We were all stunned and heartbroken to see the video of George Floyd's death circulating on the internet. It has been a stern and macabre reminder of a devastating truth which exists in the US: that police are killing innocent black people. It was a wake-up call for white people who had denied or lived in blissful ignorance about the problem. It has since sparked riots and protests across the country and all over the world.

It brings to life a debate about the idea of "Civility" which Joseph Harris writes about in Rewriting. Harris writes that in disagreeing, "There is a necessary agonism" and I believe that this is especially true when we apply it to a movement. There is a level of discomfort that must be felt in order to make big changes in regard to Civil Rights, a level of discomfort which Robinson writes about in You Cannot Touch My Hair. But the discomfort she writes about is only a subtle discomfort akin to the discomfort that a woman feels when she has mastered her mother-in-law's signature recipe and is met with "Not enough paprika." I'd like to counter this in application to our modern Civil Rights movement: that civility is all well and good, especially in the world of academia, but in the real world discomfort drives change. In the real world, anger can sometimes speak louder than civility.

When we think about Pride month, we think rainbows and parties and gay pride and happiness, but really this was all made possible by anger and discomfort. Pride was built on the backs of trans people of colour like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots which were the beginning of Pride and LGBTQ rights. They did not get us to the point where we are with LGBTQ rights by being civil and "disagreeing about points of view without alienating the persons who [held] them" (Harris 68). They got us here by being angry, by effing rioting.

As you consider your thoughts about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, remember that sometimes rights are won by fucking rioting. Don't silence your discomfort. Instead, listen, and make a change.