Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

“America needs a homegirl intervention in the worst way. So in this book, I’m doing what Black women do best. I’m calling America out on her bullshit about racism, sexism, classicism, homophobia, and a bunch of other stuff.”

Cooper enhances her authority with an audience of Black female readers by relying on the persona of a “homegirl” who is intervening to address serious flaws in the culture and politics of the United States. The casual “bunch of other stuff” is an example of the informal diction she uses to make her writing accessible to the general reader.

“If Black women don’t figure out how to love other Black women (cis and trans, queer and straight, and everything in between), it will be the death of us.”

Cooper frequently addresses women who are trans and queer, choices that reinforce her attention to the diversity within the social identity of the Black woman. These gestures of inclusion reflect the influence of intersectional feminism on her work.

“Beyoncé is my feminist muse.”

As a crunk feminist, Cooper analyzes Black female icon Beyoncé because popular Black music is an important site for Black women to grapple with their multiple social identities. Cooper’s unabashed admiration for Beyoncé also helps her connect with readers.

“Immediately, I watched Black feminist chicks losing their minds, citing their outrage over having someone as powerful as Beyoncé telling them to bow down. (¬_¬) [unamused face/side-eye emoji] This outrage felt rooted in willful ignorance and emotional dishonesty.”

The emoji signals the influence of social media and discussions of social media on Cooper’s work. Its inclusion in this instance also underscores that she and her imagined readers are members of the same generational cohort.

“Black feminism taught me my feminism, and Hip Hop taught me my crunk, but the Baby-Sitters were the first to help me imagine what the contours of loving female friendships could look like.”

Cooper relies on personal experience—her complicated relationship with the Baby-Sitters books—to show what intersectional feminist analysis looks like in practice. Cooper could identity with those characters on the basis of being a girl/woman but still feel alienated by books that exclude and marginalize Black female identity.

“But the hustling spirit that I saw in Hillary Clinton resonated with the oft- repeated Black proverb: You have to work twice as hard to get half as far. [.] But I believe that there is no other group of women who can understand just how devastating Hillary Clinton’s loss was than Black women. What might feel like a singular and stunning defeat for her is one that Black women learn to live with every day—the sense that you are a woman before your time, that your brilliance and talents are limited by the historical moment and the retrograde politics within that moment.”

Cooper expands her discussion of Black women’s relationship with white femininity by considering the ways in which Clinton was both advantaged and disadvantages as a white woman. Cooper argues that Black women and Clinton have a shared experience that could have the potential to create alliances.

“Toxic masculinity kills.”

Cooper’s simple, powerful statement comes at the end of a paragraph in which she recounts the pervasive impact of toxic masculinity in her life and the lives of her parents. That pivot is one of many moments when she relies on lived experience as both evidence and framework for her Black feminist analyses.

“Patriarchy is America’s daddy issue.”

This statement makes the connection between intimate violence and the violence that is at the root of the United States’ wars of aggression. This move underscores Cooper’s assumption that systemic forces have impacts large and small, making seemingly personal issues political.

“Intersectionality [… is] the idea that we are all integrally formed and multiply impacted by the different ways that systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy affect our lives.”

Cooper weaves in theory in small chunks like these. This approach to incorporating theory keeps the book accessible to general readers and allows Cooper to fulfill her role as a public intellectual, a person who introduces critical theory to lay audiences and in more general contexts.

“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.”

Cooper’s discussion of what is wrong with the self-help industry is another instance of reframing what seems like individual problems by noting the role of systemic forces. Her statement here is also a fundamental tenet of intersectional feminism. Her wry rhetorical question keeps the discussion accessible.

“‘Girl,’ Grandmama said while gesturing mischievously toward her nether regions, ‘I had good stuff.’”

Cooper’s grandmother is a woman one would expect to endorse the Black church’s position that sex should happen only in the context in marriage and that open talk about sex isn’t respectable. By introducing her discussion of sexuality and faith with this story about her grandmother’s advice, Cooper adds credibility to her controversial position on sex and faith.

“Ruth and Naomi plotted to trick Boaz into marrying her. Ruth kicked it to him first. She didn’t wait on Boaz to ask her out on a date. And I personally think that Ruth did all manner of sexual acts to drunken Boaz in the tent.”

Cooper retells this important biblical story that is familiar to many Black women who have listened to sermons about waiting for love. Her revision is an effort to disrupt readers’ ideas about what the Bible has to say about sex. Cooper knows this retelling is provocative, but the humor here is also designed to disarm the potentially offended reader.

“The Respectables’ credo is two-fold: You have to be twice as good to get half as far, and Never let ‘em catch you slippin’. But the Respectables ideally would say this in completely proper English without my Hip Hop-era remix.”

Cooper succinctly articulates Black respectability politics in a way that is accessible to her readers. She frequently remixes sayings from Black vernacular and popular culture to capitalize on the culture she and her readers share. Those moves reinforce her credibility with her readers.

“Individualized acts of eloquent rage have limited reach. But the collective, orchestrated fury of Black women can move the world. This is what the Black Lives Matter movement has reminded us. There is something clarifying about Black women’s rage, something essential about the way it drills down to the core truth. The truth is that Black women’s anger is not the problem: ‘For it is not the anger of black women,’ Lorde tells us, ‘which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not [our] anger which launches rockets.’”

Cooper relies on contemporary Black culture and a quote from Black feminist Audre Lorde to make her argument. This quote also makes the connection between imperialism abroad and oppression at home in the United States. Intersectionality informs her attentiveness to the interplay of race, gender, and national identity.

“What that white lady judge didn’t know is that I eat white-lady tears for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. [.] On the day of the Women’s March, I skipped it and went to my girl’s spot for a very Black brunch in Brooklyn. Watching white women take it to the streets to protest an election outcome that was the result of white women’s powerful voting bloc felt like an exercise in white-lady tears if I ever saw one, and I knew I couldn’t be trusted to act right amidst a sea of pink pussy hats and white women struggling to understand what intersectionality means.”

“White-lady tears” is a subtype of white fragility. It involves white people’s anger and resentment when forced to confront the unearned privilege that comes with their social identities. Cooper is here recounting her calm and rageful (as opposed to angry) response to an agitated white woman who accosted her after a talk; she is also explaining why she refused to attend the Women’s March. She instead chose to engage in self-care (the brunch) in a welcoming space. Cooper’s response to both of these events is an illustration of what it looks like to decenter the emotions of white women in the feminist struggle.

“White women and Black men share a kind of narcissism that comes from being viewed as the most vulnerable entities within their respective races. Black people hesitate to call out Black men for male privilege because they have experienced such devastation at the hands of a white supremacist system. And white women frequently don’t recognize that. Though women are oppressed around the world, whiteness elevates the value of their femininity. That allows them to get away with shit that women of color pay royally for.”

This provocative statement shows just how Black women’s intersecting identities shape their relationships with friends, lovers, and potential allies. One of Cooper’s major premises is that no relationship is proof against systemic forces, and her comment here shows just how simultaneous privilege and disadvantage make strange bedfellows.

“Letting fear rule is dangerous if you’re a regular person. If you have levels of privilege and power unmatched in the modern world, being ruled by fear is catastrophic for those with less power than you. Fear of Black people is one of the grandest delusions of white supremacy.”

Cooper’s analysis of fear, like her analysis of anger, is attentive to the way that affect (emotion) has political implications, depending on who is manifesting that emotion and in what context. In the context of the power of institutions such as the criminal justice system, white fear is dangerous.

“Whether it’s […] Bone Crusher reminding his foes that he ‘ain’t never scared,’ crunk music has always been the soundtrack to my resistance. It has kept me supplied in the lyrical defiance necessary to look white supremacy in the face and emerge victorious.”

Cooper uses Bone Crusher’s song title as the title of her essay, and her discussion of why Bone Crusher’s “Never Scared” is one of her anthems is a clear statement that she is a crunk feminist. While it might be easy to assume that popular culture is frivolous, Cooper’s celebration of crunk highlights the importance of popular culture as a tool for self-understanding and political action.

“‘Formation,’ the debut track on Lemonade, is an invitation to a Black-girl conjuring session. In the song, the High Priestess of Hip Hop culture tells us, ‘Okay ladies. Now, let’s get in formation.’ She is calling us into very particular formations—the kind of collective gatherings that can shift the culture, that can combat white supremacy, and sexism, and homophobia, the kinds of spaces that can use Black-girl magic to change the world.”

Cooper’s analysis of Beyoncé’s dance, body, and voice shows in specific detail how Black popular culture and Black female icons such as Beyoncé help create spaces where Black women can find joy and form relationships that have political potential.

“Real talk? I blame Bill Clinton.”

This comment punctuates a long narrative about how Cooper’s female relatives blamed her for her own dating troubles. “Real talk” is a phrase that comes in blunt conversation between intimates. Using it here helps Cooper make the pivot from personal experience to analysis of systemic forces in her own life. Transitions like these are how Cooper makes the connection between the personal and the political.

“I was celibate with the exception of a couple of singular and very brief encounters. That is nearly a decade without being touched. […] At some point, after you’ve gone years without a man so much as smiling your way or admiring your looks, you begin to feel invisible. You begin to doubt your own gaze.”

This passage is a raw confession of the deep hurt and loneliness Cooper experienced as a woman dealing with the personal impact of systemic problems. Disclosures like these model for the reader what vulnerability looks like and how being open about experiences like these can open up discussion that can heal Black women.

“Favor isn’t fair. So we should have what womanist theologians call a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’—a healthy skepticism—of the institutions and opportunities that would make of us exceptions. […] In fact, if this framework of favor goes unchecked it lays the groundwork for an unholy trinity between the church, neoliberalism, and racial respectability politics.”

Cooper incorporates concepts from the Black church, the philosophical study of knowledge, cultural studies, structuralism, feminism, and Marxism. The sheer number of disciplines reflects the multidisciplinary roots of her Black feminism. Framing that discussion with a common saying also helps keep the discussion accessible.

“I'm not planning to go back home to live, because where I'm from is no place for a radical feminist Black girl who likes to challenge preachers in her spare time. But I am responsible in big and small ways for making that place and places like it better, more equitable and more just. I'm thankful for the favor, such as it is, but I refuse to mistake favor for freedom.”

Cooper’s explanation for refusing to return home to live is attentive to the way she has both privilege and disadvantage at the same time—another instance of intersectionality at work. Her discussion of her identity in this instance helps her to have a broader discussion about racial authenticity and inequality.