Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

By Dr. Brittney Cooper

In Eloquent Rage, Dr. Cooper gives me my favorite definition of feminism: loving — really loving — women.

“I give the side eye to any Black woman who doesn’t have other Black women friends, to any woman who is prone to talk about how she relates better to men than to women, to anyone who goes on and on about how she “doesn’t trust females.” If you say fuck the patriarchy but 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.”

-Dr. Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

In paragraphs ranging from hilarious to mournful, Dr. Cooper (@professor_crunk) writes a self-declared “homegirl intervention.” She covers ground feminists will recognize in a voice so refreshingly readable you don’t need to be an academic feminist wonk to enjoy. I mean, I read most of the book in my bathtub, totally engrossed until the water got cold. She brings in seriously important intersections of Blackness and Feminism (“capital B, capital F”). While we feminists can talk some SMACK on self-serving Christianity (especially those of us who respect and love Christ consciousness), Dr. Cooper speaks not only of smugly patriarchal ministers, but also of Black respectability-politics-hawking Southern Baptist culture. She counter-proposes her own “theology for grown-ass women”: ie, ain’t no God create you to feel shame for owning your own consensual, adult sexual relationships and expression.

“I love a penis attached to a man who knows how to use it, but I’m uninterested in femme-style battle royales over dick. That’s just so basic. Who has time? … the larger point is that however dope fellatio may be, fellating the patriarchy is no way to win.” 

-Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

Side note to those newer to the anti-racist revolution: if you aren’t familiar with respectability politics, Eloquent Rage is worth reading for this overview alone. In essence it’s victim-blaming. It is one of the most common arguments racist apologists deploy, both Black and white. It is reductionist, extremely limiting, and dismisses injustice. Anti-racist allies, we need to be able to recognize it.

There were times I recognized discomfort while reading Dr. Cooper’s work. If ya white, you might, too. For example, she calls out the phenomenon of white girl tears: how ardently the patriarchy is aligned to help (and create…) the fainting (white) damsel in distress, and points to the women in consensual (on the woman’s part) but culturally illicit relationships with Black men in the postbellum South, who subsequently cried rape rather than face stigmatization. Given that those tears lead to lynching, we are not talking about powerless white women. We are talking about white women who know damn well their tears have power. (Relevant 2020 case: a white woman calling 911 on Black birder Christian Cooper in Central Park and screaming that she felt like her life was in danger… because he asked her to put her dog on a leash. Given precedent of police shooting Black men for being Black, some people argued there’s a case to be made this was attempted murder.) Some white women absolutely need this call out to stop leveraging our power — especially power that comes from being young, pretty, and thin — to victimize ourselves, and instead use that power to get s*** done.

I felt discomfort because I love and admire the hell out of Black women (yes, white girls can see and appreciate #blackgirlmagic), and the part of me that is forever shy and deferential felt excluded when this obviously badass, funny, smart, admirable Black woman writes “White women do this…” But here’s the thing, and it’s important: part of waking up is being able to let go of the ego that needs to be validated “but I’M not like that.”

Here’s a parallel we feminists who are white can understand:

Me to him: Men don’t realize some of the ways they harm women.

Him to me: Not all men harm women.

Me to him: Feminist rage

Right? We hate that. We hate when our male partners and friends don’t hear what we’re actually expressing when we point to harmful masculinity, which is pain, disenfranchisement, more than likely personally experienced violation, and really freaking hoping they hear we are rooting for them to show up in a way we don’t often see people who also fall into their (male) demographic show up. We’re not dishing on all men, we’re speaking generally because holy Goddess, do they understand how many women have been hurt by men, yes we know, not all men, that isn’t helping right now.

So where could we as feminists, allies, and, yeah, white girls, get off on putting down Dr. Cooper’s book because we want to protest “not all white women”? If we need men to get over saying “not all men”, we need to sit with the discomfort of hearing how some white women really do “place their race over their gender,” as she writes, as in the almost half of white women who voted for T****.

Just learn to love yourself, we are told. But patriarchy is nothing if not the structurally induced hatred of women. If every woman and girl learned to love herself fiercely, the patriarchy would still be intact; it would demand that she be killed for having the audacity to think she was somebody. 

-Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage

Readability: Couldn’t put it down

Relatability: Mind-expanding

Recommended for: feminists looking to better understand intersectionality, all young women, adults seeking to be better anti-racist allies. I don’t feel like it’s my place to advise Black girls on anything, ever, and also, I will say Dr. Cooper has y’all’s back in a real way that may feel really wonderful to read.

Follow Dr. Cooper: Twitter, and hear her speak here.