And they do so by saying, we will get there. White people dictate the pace of social inclusion. We have racial animus the likes of which we have not seen in my lifetime, a resurgence of law enforcement engaging black folks in ways that are often deadly and often with impunity. We keep on relitigating basically the 1860s in this country. And part of the reason that we have, for instance, Black History Month in this country is because we literally have to make the argument that black people have actually done things that are significant to the creation of the nation-state.Īnd it turns out if we didn't have things like Black History Month, apparently, people wouldn't believe that black people were actually significant historical actors.

Time has a history, and so do black people. So, in the 1700s and 1800s, various groups of white European men got together and just decided that Africa didn't matter in the span of world history. And there's a way that, even if you go back to the early Western philosophers that everybody loved - my least favorite is Georg Hegel, who said, you know, Africa is no historic part of the world. White people feel like they own time and control history. But I think that being both those things is the thing that will save us. I'm unapologetically black, and I'm unapologetically a feminist.Īnd, look, depending on what circles you're in, it's hard to be both those things at the same time.

A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower: I'm a black feminist, capital B, capital F.

Eloquent rage brittney cooper