We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

by Bettina L. Love

Thus, while diversity was present in the proceedings involving a Black man and a Black woman, both of them extremely accomplished, Thomas’s male privilege, along with America’s ignorance and outright disregard of Black women’s own history of lynchings and sexual trauma due to assault, harassment, and rape, made it easy for America to ignore Hill’s accusations. And even today, we see the “high-tech lynching” claim used to excuse Bill Cosby’s numerous sexual assaults. Intersectionality would have allowed both race and Black women’s history of sexual trauma to enter the conversation. Sadly, in addition to Bill Cosby being a rapist, he is also a great example of someone who stood for racial uplift but not intersectional social justice; the two terms are often conflated. Cosby generously gave to historically Black colleges and universities and initiatives that supported the racial uplift of Black people, but his justice stopped there. The racial uplift of dark people is crucial, but that uplift cannot come at the expense of trans folx, folx with disabilities, or women.