Thick: And Other Essays

by Tressie McMillan Cottom

I am living in the most opportune time in black history in the United States and that means, still, that I will die younger, live poorer, risk more exposure to police violence, and be punished by social policy for being a black woman in ways that aren’t true for almost any other group in this nation. That is the best it has ever been to be black in America and it is still that statistically bad at the macro level.

Smart is only a construct of correspondence, between one’s abilities, one’s environment, and one’s moment in history. I am smart in the right way, in the right time, on the right end of globalization.

Sexual violence against black girls and women has, until very recently, been hidden in the statistics about “women” writ large. In many ways, those stores are similar. We are most vulnerable to the men in our homes. We are taught to blame ourselves. We fear reprisal for speaking up. But black women and girls face additional burdens of protecting the reputations of black boys and men. As black feminists have argued, that burden has trapped us in cultural silences that a focus on gender violence alone cannot capture.

The most accurate statement about black women and rape/sexual abuse ever!