Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

by Brittney Cooper

One of feminism’s biggest failures is its failure to insist that feminism is, first and foremost, about truly, deeply, and unapologetically loving women.

Before we fully learn to love ourselves, all people of color in the United States learn that we are supporting characters and spectators in the collective story of white people’s lives.

White women have absolutely been accomplices to the American project of white supremacy, but their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons have always been the masterminds. Let us never forget that.

I am too afraid to say these things that need to be said, because the consequence of my demands might be another man leaving me, and my father taught me that my needs weren’t compelling enough to make a man stay. I am, then, a grown woman who struggles mightily to trust what it might mean for a man to stay, to show up, to catch me when I fall, acquainted as I am with the relief that comes when they finally, simply, go. The leaving feels like the tanks are finally pulling out. But also like I am on my own.

better for you, and if I wanted better for you, then I had to want better for myself.”

I watched my mother change her mind about her worth and value and then reflect that shift in her romantic choices. She freed herself from a cycle of abuse and, in so doing, saved her own life.

White privilege works by making the advantages white people have invisible while making the supposedly “poor” choices of people of color hypervisible.

I learned in that moment that marrying a feminist dude wasn’t the goal. Instead, I learned to look for men who genuinely like and value women as people.