Over the top? Maybe. But the new, alarming truth is that I didn’t care. At all.

I suppose this was inevitable in the age of Donald Trump. Before his election, I had a wariness about racism that was abstract and low key; it noted things, like being the only black person in an E.R., but it was chiefly interested in gathering information, reflecting, analyzing. Now, that racial awareness has become visceral and overstimulated. When something racially questionable happens, I tend to leap immediately to anger. This happens even when I know distinctly I shouldn’t leap. But it doesn’t matter.

And why should it matter? In this Trump age of gross unreason, meeting incivility with civility has felt small to me, and futile. More and more, it feels as if the only way to be heard and understood is to give back exactly what I’m getting, not just from bilious Mr. Trump but from his base, otherwise known as my fellow Americans. That fact alone — that we are all Americans — has become infuriating. Watching those outrageous Trump rallies especially puts me on edge, seeing those red faces taunting Mexicans, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, in eager unison. The anger that was drawn to the surface in 2016 and stayed there quickly boils over. I feel like a fool for believing in racial harmony, for being taught at an early age that it is fundamental to the American project. I feel — again — that Malcolm X was right, black people are wasting their time trying to win over white people when they so clearly have no interest in being won over.

The fact that our fates are intertwined — something even Malcolm eventually realized — makes me not hopeful, as it once did, but angrier. I feel stuck in a terrible, lopsided marriage. The least I should be able to do in this dysfunctional relationship is to vent my anger, not on paper or newsprint, but in the real world, in real time. That’s what a big chunk of Republican America is doing, with zero regrets. I have become envious of that. I want true equality, 2020 style — the right to claim and fully express my own well-earned piece of the American id.

And yet, I know this is indulgent. Aggression for aggression’s sake goes against the practice of generations of black struggle that have made justice bigger than everybody’s anger, black and white. Going off on a white person because she deserves it or because you can is not something Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King Jr., would have approved of — not because it’s unwarranted but because it’s undisciplined. It’s a waste of resources. And then there’s the fact that public displays of anger are still risky for black folk. They might land you in jail, or at the very least on the wrong side of authority, potentially heaping injustice on top of waste.

On the way out, I told the receptionist I was sorry if I had been rude. “I’ve had a bad morning,” I said. It was true: I’ve had bad mornings for three years.