In the USA, black rage refers to a purported psychological phenomena and innovative defense proposed, but not used, for the 1994 Colin Ferguson mass murder trial. Ferguson's lawyers (William Kunstler) argued that he should not be held criminally liable, for actions which broke the law, because he was overcome with rage by his perceived society's racist discrimination against black people. Ferguson rejected the advice of his lawyer and represented himself, arguing instead that he was completely innocent; he was found guilty and imprisoned.
Black rage was first proposed by psychologists William Henry Grier and Price Cobbs in their 1968 book Black Rage (ISBN 1-57910-349-9). Grier and Cobbs argue that black people living in a racist, white supremacist society are psychologically damaged by the effects of racist oppression. This damage causes black people to act abnormally in certain situations.
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or rage:
“You can’t be what you don’t see. I didn’t think about being a doctor. I didn’t even think about being a clerk in a store—I’d never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.”
—Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933)
“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
Successless wars, and poverty behind;
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)