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sass is simply a more palatable form of rage.
men had been socialized to desexualize outspoken women.
There is no room in my life for shallow or basic connections.
it’s dangerous to get them in a context where you have no analysis of how and why those are your desires.
loving oneself in a world where there is always someone ready to do you harm is even harder.
flirting with whiteness and passing for white in ways that were fundamentally anti-Black and not affirming for women of color.
I’m a Black Feminist, capital B, capital F.
white women don’t do treacherous shit. Far too often they are straight-up enemies to the work of ending patriarchy and racism.
can’t let white women become the center of a conversation that isn’t about them.
appealed to the parts of me that despise the insincerity and superficiality of small talk. She
Our nation’s story is one of men using violence—against Native folks, against Black folks, and against women—to build and fund a grand “experiment in democracy.”
Picking on countries full of people of color with less money and resources is also a racist and imperial project.
in that way that Black women can say everything while saying so little: “He didn’t treat me right.”
According to several years of reports by the Violence Policy Center, in this, the second decade of the twenty-first century, eight Black women per week, more than one per day, are murdered, usually with guns, and usually by a Black male they know. More than one thousand women of all races are murdered each year, in similar incidents, usually by men of their own race. It has been said before, but it is worth saying again: Toxic masculinity
demanding much but giving little.
I wonder about a world in which you can be kind to everyone but the people who belong to you.
empathy for the “starving children of Africa” reflects this conundrum of American empathy.
I have learned to defend myself because I’ve never been able to rely on a man to do it for me.
Sexism, like every other “ism,” is a willful refusal to not see what is right in front of you.
Our politics and beliefs should serve us; we should not serve them.
After slavery, our bodies and the children they produced were tethered to multiple generations of low-wage work and poverty, providing staffing for the perpetuation of the U.S. underclass.
They are demands for recognition of citizenship and humanity.
military to become the only viable option that so many of our people have had for access into the middle class.
brought more relief in his absence than with his presence,
We have to spend our time teaching young men how not to be violent men and partners.
Black men frequently don’t acknowledge our vulnerability, don’t seem to think we need defending, and don’t feel a political responsibility to hold Black women (who aren’t their mothers or sisters or daughters) up and honor them. There
dehumanization and disrespect they have felt.
worthy of care and concern.
showing care and concern for the women you want to sleep with or the women who are related to you is not the same as having an overarching commitment to Black women’s political, social, and personal well-being as a justice project.
bow down and do their bidding.
pretty objects that bolstered their social capital while commanding or compelling no responsibility from them for, and to,
Martin Luther King preached about the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”
America’s many racist wars of aggression abroad.
surveillance, control, occupation, and terror are
multiply impacted by the different ways that systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy affect
We all come with a perspective and an agenda.
world where Black women between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four have been estimated to have only about $100 of net wealth.
The system’s response to seeing us bend is to break us entirely.
Because traffic stops are frequently a life-or-death matter for Black people, stopping traffic has become one of the primary modes of protest for the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM).
“When people disrupt highways and streets, it is about disrupting business as usual.
a world where we all can go to our destinations safely and soundly or no one can.
thin line between clarity and craziness, and sometimes clarity can be crazy-making.
Audre Lorde famously said, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
has crushed untold numbers of trans Black women, who have been killed simply for having the audacity to live their truth.
individual transformation is neither a substitute for nor a harbinger of structural transformation.
The idea that only middle-class, straight, married women deserve to start families is both racist and patriarchal.
obscures the variety of ways that middle-class families do receive public assistance.
White families have been the primary beneficiaries of both public and corporate welfare in the form of redlining policies that drove down property values in Black neighborhoods, making those neighborhoods undesirable for businesses, families, and schools. They have been beneficiaries of favorable bank-loan terms to help them purchase safe, affordable, quality housing. They are the beneficiaries of marital and housing tax breaks and the disproportionate beneficiaries of the dwindling number of quality public schools that we have left.
Black women should imbibe shame and blame for all the creative ways that we build families and lives, arrange fulfilling partnerships, and work to maintain safe homes and steady employment.
Power is conferred by social systems. Empowerment and power are not the same thing.
