Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

by Brittney Cooper

If you say fuck the patriarchy but you don’t ride for other women, then it might be more true that the patriarchy has fucked you, seducing you with the belief that men care more about your well-being than women do.

I’m not saying white women don’t do treacherous shit. Far too often they are straight-up enemies to the work of ending patriarchy and racism. But we still can’t let white women become the center of a conversation that isn’t about them.

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.

The problem is that only the experiences of white people are treated as universal. Meanwhile, Black movies, shows, and books are typically seen as limited and particular.

I learned first and foremost, though, that if people can’t trust you, you can’t lead them.

I want to be strong. Badass women have to be strong. But I don’t ever want to be strong in ways that are inauthentic, dishonest, and dangerous to my health and well-being.

Lots of young activists of color that I know point to this. They point to the way police occupy Black communities like our military forces occupy places abroad.

Dogma isn’t just dangerous. It’s deadly. Our politics and beliefs should serve us; we should not serve them.

We should not have to rely on supernatural acts of God to keep women safe.

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

I believe that each of us is responsible for doing our own emotional work. We can’t hope to have healthy relationships of any type if we are unwilling to own our shit.

On the other hand, individual transformation is neither a substitute for nor a harbinger of structural transformation.

Empowerment looks like cultivating the wisdom to make the best choices we can out of what are customarily a piss-poor set of options.

Individual solutions to collective problems cannot work, no matter how personally empowering they may feel.

Eloquent rage isn’t always loud, but it is always effective.

But sometimes the only thing that is in order is to act out of order. To turn up, show out, and disrupt.

I’m tired of the lie that relationships and love are not political. The struggle of queer folks to build families in the ways they desire demonstrate that love is political.

all fears matter, but some fears are treated as though they matter more.