![]() “All of a sudden, there was a young Black woman saying, ‘I see you, and I get it, and how you do the thing you do opens up ways for me to be me,’” she said. In Berkeley, Cooper talked about what this meant to her, saying it felt like her student was an “affirming mirror.” One day she ran into a former student, a young Black woman, who told her that her she had loved Cooper’s lectures, which she said were filled with “eloquent rage.” At first Cooper felt defensive, used to white people calling her angry to dismiss her, but this student was saying Cooper’s rage inspired her. She opens the book with a story of how she had tried to hide her anger, to avoid playing into the stereotype of an angry Black woman. ![]() ![]() Williams is an example of a woman who has focused her rage with precision, Cooper thinks, and she wants to do the same thing. She quotes a line about rage from Audre Lorde’s book Sister Outsider - which she says was like a feminist bible to her - “Focused with precision, it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” She also writes about how rage can move us forward. In Eloquent Rage, along with anger, Cooper writes about friendship, hip-hop, family, her own personal journey, and love - her job as a Black feminist, she writes, is to love Black women and girls. “That is Black rage shifting the possibilities of the Democratic party in the right direction.” “And that is the product of Black women saying, ‘Hell, no - we won’t stand for this,’” she said. “We might have the first Black woman governor in this country, and we have a Democratic senator in Alabama,” she said, speaking of Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor of Georgia, and Doug Jones, who last year won the Senate seat previously held by Jeff Sessions. This rage can power movements for justice, Cooper says, and she thinks Black people are at the vanguard of that. It’s the moment when the women yelled at Jeff Flake in the elevator - what they say to him is, ‘Your actions today are a commentary on my context.’ When we’re seeing the rage of marginalized people, it always makes sense in context, which is precisely why those in power have a vested interest in always reading it out of context.” So women are read as just shrill and hysterical because there’s no context that justifies this level of upset or emotion. “Those in power always read black people and women out of context, and it allows them to be dismissive of the claim being made. ![]() “People perceive black women at the moment you see the blowup - they never see the disrespect compounded by race and gender,” she said. ![]() To accuse Williams of cheating when she has won 23 Grand Slams - more than any other player - disrespects her entire career, Cooper says. She pointed out there was plenty behind Williams’ frustration, including tennis officials showing up at her house to drug test her although she has never tested positive for anything. In an interview after her talk, Cooper, the author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, talked more about Williams’ anger and our reaction to it. The two were at Uncharted: The Berkeley Festival of Ideas, and Cooper, a tennis fan, right between Serena and her sister, Venus, in age, had plenty to say about Williams and the umpire accusing her of cheating. talked with her about rage, the hearings to put Brett Kavanuagh, credibly accused of sexual assault by three women, on the Supreme Court, and tennis player Serena Williams’ recent experience with an umpire at the U.S. In the conversation with writer and Rutgers professor Brittney Cooper, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis Taylor Jr. Feminism Brittney Cooper on rage as a superpower Rage is “the one way I know to respect the humanity of marginalized groups,” said Cooper. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |