Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

by Brittney Cooper

Recently I found out that I had been placed on a “professor watchlist” for a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to remove “liberal bias” from the college classroom. What they mean by “liberal bias” is that they don’t want a Black woman standing in a classroom, teaching college students that racism is real, sexism is a problem, homophobia is repugnant, and capitalism and the elitism it begets are worthy of our deepest skepticism. This is not knowledge, they say. It’s my “racial agenda” governing how I run my classroom. By letting me know that they are watching me, they are hoping to scare me. But this is why I’m “never scared,” as we say in the crunk South. This doesn’t mean I’m never afraid. Being never scared has a cultural inflection to it that is about defiance, and about a refusal to be cowed into submission. To be black is to know you are being watched—at all times—anyway.