The cry of an angry Black man in a world sick with racism

Sometimes I just want to scream.

When confronting the frustrations of American life Marvin Gaye used to sing, “Makes me wanna holler, throw up both my hands.” Do you ever feel that way? That at some moment in time, in some place in which you are situated, everything just overwhelms you? You lift your head toward heaven, you just open up your arms and, from the depths of your being, you let out a full-throated wail. I just want to scream today, and I wanted to scream yesterday and the day before that.

I am 6 foot 4 inches tall. I am nearly 70 years old. I have a responsible position in my community in Harlem. Ninety percent of the time, I am the image of the role I hold in our Catholic Church. Most of the time, I would not allow myself to scream. It would be unseemly for me to express the pain, the anger, the disappointment that I have felt for most of this last year. But God knows that I feel like screaming.