Eloquent Rage Quotes

“Real radicalism implores us to tell the whole ugly truth, even when it is inconvenient. To own the hurt and the pain. To own our shit, too. To think about it systemically and collectively, but never to diminish the import of the trauma.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“One of feminism’s biggest failures is its failure to insist that feminism is, first and foremost, about truly, deeply, and unapologetically loving women.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“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. It isn’t true.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“I love being a woman and being a friend to other women,' should be feminism's tagline.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“When I talk about owning eloquent rage as your superpower, it comes with the clear caveat that not everyone is worth your time or your rage.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“But “empowerment” is a tricky word. It’s also a decidedly neoliberal word that places the responsibility for combating systems on individuals. Neoliberalism is endlessly concerned with “personal responsibility” and individual self-regulation. It tells us that in a free market, devoid of any regulation or accountability at the top, what happens to those on the bottom is entirely our fault. Did we have enough drive? Enough vision? Enough hustle to change our condition? The politics of personal empowerment suggests to us that if we simply “free our minds, then our asses will follow.” I’m not convinced that this is true. Why? Have you ever noticed that people who have real “power”—wealth, job security, influence—don’t attend “empowerment” seminars? Power is not attained from books and seminars. Not alone, anyway. Power is conferred by social systems. Empowerment and power are not the same thing. We must quit mistaking the two. Better yet, we must quit settling for one when what we really need is the other.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“And while it is okay to acknowledge that all kinds of women, whether white, Black, Indigenous, Latina, Asian, cis, gender nonconforming, trans, queer, bi, or straight might have different experiences, it's not cool to act as though transwomen are in some entirely separate category from the more general category of woman. That is something that feminism needs to be clear on - that it isn't feminism if all women's concerns, particularly the most marginalized women's concerns, aren't taken seriously.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Sexism, like every other “ism,” is a willful refusal to not see what is right in front of you.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“I have always lingered over stories of women who lead, women who know what they want out of this world, and women who demand that others respect them and recognize their magic.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“In other words, white fears rest on the presumption that they are rooted in fact; everyone who is nonwhite is treated as though their fears are the stuff of fantasy.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Black women have the right to be mad as hell. We have been dreaming of freedom and carving out spaces for liberation since we arrived on these shores. There is no other group, save Indigenous women, that knows and understands more fully the soul of the American body politic than Black women, whose reproductive and social labor have made the world what it is.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“White privilege works by making the advantages white people have invisible while making the supposedly 'poor' choices of people of color hypervisible.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“it’s not that people don’t love you, it’s that they don’t have the same capacity to love as you do.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“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 stories we watch and read ask us to put aside their whiteness and relate to their very "universal" human struggles around conflict with the world, the self, and others. 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.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“The collective, orchestrated fury of Black women can move the whole world.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Loving Black girls is complicated, but loving oneself in a world where there is always someone ready to do you harm is even harder.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Black women know what it means to love ourselves in a world that hates us. We know what it means to do a whole lot with very little, to “make a dollar out of fifteen cents,” as it were. We know what it means to snatch dignity from the jaws of power and come out standing. We know what it means to face horrific violence and trauma from both our communities and our nation-state and carry on anyway. But we also scream, and cry, and hurt, and mourn, and struggle. We get heartbroken, our feelings get stepped on, our dreams get crushed. We get angry, and”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“The truth is that Angry Black Women are looked upon as entities to be contained, as inconvenient citizens who keep on talking about their rights while refusing to do their duty and smile at everyone.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“We live in a nation that does everything to induce our rage, while simultaneously doing everything to deny that we have a right to feel it. American democracy is as much a project of suppressing Black rage as it is of legitimizing and elevating white rage. American democracy uses calls for civility, equality, liberty, and justice as smoke screens to obscure all the ways in which Black folks are treated uncivilly, unequally, illiberally, and unjustly as a matter of course.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“The fact that our society honestly believes that poor women don’t have the right to start families, because they may require public assistance, 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.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“The lie we are told is that white rage and white fear are honest emotions that preserve the integrity of American democracy. More often than not, we keep learning that white rage and white fear are dishonest impulses that lead us toward fascism. White rage and white fear are reactions to perceptions among white people that their power might be slipping away.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Black women turn to sass when rage is too risky—because we have jobs to keep, families to feed, and bills to pay.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“White lady tears might seem to not be a big deal, but they are actually quite dangerous. When white women signal through their tears that they feel unsafe, misunderstood, or attacked, the whole world rises in their defense. The mythic nature of white female vulnerability compels protective impulses to arise in all men, regardless of race.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Respectability politics are at their core a rage-management project. Learning to manage one’s rage by daily tamping down that rage is a response to routine assaults on one’s dignity in a world where rage might get you killed or cause you to lose your job.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“Those who feel “empowered” talk about their personal power to change their individual condition. Those with actual power make decisions that are of social and material consequence to themselves and others.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“This is a book by a grown-ass woman written for other grown-ass women. This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously and for men who take grown women seriously. This is a book for women who know shit is fucked up. These women want to change things but don't know where to begin.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“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.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“I am always struck by the ways other people’s stories about my father tend to highlight his empathy and kindness for others. I wonder about a world in which you can be kind to everyone but the people who belong to you.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“What you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“The thing I know today, after many cycles of homegirls, many more years of girl crushes, and a life of straight sexual activity, is that one can’t truly be a feminist if you don’t really love women.”
― Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower