In Black America; Eloquent Rage, with Dr. Britney Cooper, Part I

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. I kind of did elephant rage because I had a student when I was finishing up my PhD of young black woman who was sitting on my lectures and many months after she was in my class, she said, I love to hear you lecture because your lectures were filled with rage and it was like the most eloquent rage ever and it was a moment of reckoning for me because I had been dogs by that angry black woman stereotype and so I was immediately defensive and said to her, you know, I'm not angry, I'm passionate and she kind of pinned me with this black girl loose, you know and just said, you know, you know you're angry and it was like a moment where only a black woman can give you that look and many, if you know black woman, you know what that look is, you know, it's like stop, you know, be for real,

right? I see you and she did and it helped me to be honest about the fact that I was deeply angry about many of the injustices that I had faced in my life and angry as a black person about the injustices that black people face every day. Dr. Brittany Cooper assisted the first of women's and gender studies and African studies at Rutgers University and on fifth eloquent rage a black feminist discovers a superpower published by St. Martin's Press. In a book, eloquent rage Cooper gives us an up close and personal look at what it means to be black, female and a feminist. Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give women a strength to keep on fighting and that rage can be a clarifying and essential political resource and a shifting political landscape. Growing up in eastern Louisiana, Cooper witnessed firsthand that black life isn't equal nor is it fair. According to Cooper, her book keeps us all honest and accountable and remind women that

they don't have to settle for less. I'm Johnny Elhenson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, eloquent rage with Dr. Brittany Cooper in Black America. I want readers to come away believing that we actually can change the world, that if we are willing to sit with the contradictions and complexities that we all face, that maybe we can have a clear idea about how to change things in our own little neck of the woods. I want folks to have a clear sense about what the things that Black girls struggle with, but I want even folks who are not Black women to see that Black women's stories have something to tell us about the American story. Black women's stories have something to tell us about Black people's collective story. And far too often, when Black women talk about ourselves, people think that we're only talking about ourselves and that our stories are not universal and that they can't apply to anybody but us.

And that's, as you just said, is untrue. So I think that there's something in this book for everybody, for white girls, for people of color, for Black men, for little girls. There are so Black women are multifaceted and I trust that even in being able to tell my own story alongside the stories of so many Black women that I admire and love and who have informed and inspired me. In a book, Elegrant Rays, Dr. Brittany Cooper doesn't shy away from friendship and feminism, family and violence, sex and faith and race and gender. She gives voice to the many voices Black women in our society. Cooper is passionate, honest and heartfelt. When Elegrant Rays and Rustin Louisiana, she earned an undergraduate degree in English and political science on Howard University, her masters in Ph.D. from Emory University. Taking the lines of Black women and girls seriously, Cooper shows us the anger that makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player and why Beyonce's girl power anthems resonate

so hard. Too often Black women rage has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the ability and social fabric of American democracy. According to Cooper, Black women knows what it means to love themselves in a world that hates them. Recently, in Black America, spoke with this Black feminist prophet. I'm from a small town in northern Louisiana called Rustin, right near Grandling State University. So I grew up small town with working class Black folks, church folks who helped me to be a Black girl who was self-assured but who also wanted to get out in the world and try to be impactful. And so in many ways, the work that I do is contribute to the women who raised me, my grandmother, my mother, and my three aunts. I understand. What led you to write your second book? Yes, Elegrant Rays. I wanted to have a conversation that is not particularly academic about feminism and about Black women's anger.

I think Black women struggle under the stereotype of being the angry Black woman, and so many of us deny the very legitimate kinds of anger that we often experience. And so I wanted that stereotype to not be weaponized against us, but rather to create a set of conversations for us to think about what does it mean to own that we are angry that we have the right to be angry and that very often that anger helps us to do our work better rather than undercutting our ability to show up to the things that we're called to do. Now you said this wasn't a self-help book. I beg to differ. Oh no. I think young ladies actually read the book, they can kind of mirror themselves through the experiences that you've experienced thus far. Yeah, so here's the thing. I hope that the book helps people for sure, but one of the things that I'm railing against with the sort of culture of self-help is I'm tired of Black women and girls blaming themselves for everything that is wrong with the world. So there's this thing where, you know, if Black women haven't found the love they want,

they just keep on saying, well, what's wrong with me? What is the thing that I need to fix? And so often the politics of self-help are rooted in this idea that we have personal deficits that we need to fix or amend. And I want to reject that and say that I think that Black women are enough. I think that who we are is absolutely fine. And that doesn't mean that we don't all have personal work that we need to do, but it does mean that we don't have to keep blaming ourselves for all of the ways that the world is broken. And so this book tries to pursue an analysis that helps us think politically and structurally about why Black women are in the positions that we are in, so that what we're not doing is staying up every night or going to church, asking, you know, asking God to fix us or trying to fix ourselves. I don't think that that's what the problem with Black women is. I think the problem is white supremacy. I think the problem is the culture of male domination. I don't think that that's a story that Black women hear enough. And so if in hearing that story, Black women are helped and help to feel like they are

whole and like the problem is not with them, then certainly I'm here for that kind of help, for sure. I understand. You lay a lot on the table. Was it therapeutic writing this? I'm still trying to decide whether it was big. It was hard, it was very hard to try to tell my personal truth and ways that I hoped would be politically resonant for people, but it felt necessary to do. And I don't think that I knew the depths of my own sort of emotional life in some ways around these politics that I try to live out. And so I'm really thankful for that insight. And I certainly feel it certainly helps me every time a Black woman reads this book and says that she feels seen and heard. Every time that happens, I feel like I've done my work. I know that's right. What led you to become more accustomed or attuned to the majority population? You made that transition where are you in school?

You mean why did I end up sort of having the relationship with white folks that I have? Is that the question? Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I was growing up in small-time Louisiana and I basically got tagged as around age six as an academically gifted child and that meant that I was then put in classrooms that were majority white classrooms and that in and of itself is deeply unjust. That we only see sort of white children as being academic achievers in many pockets of this country still today. And so it changed the social landscape of my life so that even though in my own house I talk about, you know, I grew up in a very black working class community where my mom was listening to Lucifer Vandross and Freddie Jackson, you know, and then I go to school. And you know, I'm just sort of there with white kids and doing activities with them and really cut off from sort of a social life with other black children. And it created real challenges for me around how to show up and be excellent and meet, you know, my mom is in my community standards for being a good student but how to have the

connections with black children that I crave. And also what it meant to be friends with white children until legitimately like many of them, but also to deal with them dealing with their their parents racism, you know, so I tell the story about the little girl that I was friends with who, you know, couldn't invite me to her birthday party because as she said, you know, her daddy didn't like black people, right? And so those are the kinds of encounters that black children have to face and have to go through. And I didn't always, you know, that wasn't how my mama came up through school. So she didn't always have insight about how to help me navigate that. And so it was the thing that I had to, in some cases, figure out for myself and, you know, and I wanted to be able to tell that story and to say that so much of my own journey around what I understand about white people is growing up in deep, intimate community with white people for most of my childhood and, you know, early life and then being able to make a different set of choices once I went to college and, you know, and since then. What made you come to the point where you needed to write this book and title eloquent

rage? I titled it eloquent rage because I had a student when I was finishing up my PhD of young black woman who would send in all my lectures and many months after she was in my class. She said, I love to hear you lecture because your lectures were filled with rage and it was like the most eloquent rage ever. And it was a moment of reckoning for me because I had been dogs by that angry black woman stereotype and so I was immediately defensive and said to her, you know, I'm not angry, I'm passionate. And she kind of pinned me with this black girl look, you know, and just said, you know, you know you're angry. And it was like a moment where only a black woman can give you that look and many, if you know black woman, you know what that look is, you know, it's like, stop, you know, be for real, right? I see you. And she did, and it helped me to be honest about the fact that I was deeply angry about many of the injustices that I had faced in my life and angry as a black person about the injustices that black people face every day. But I was resistant to being characterized as angry because when white people use that

phrasing, they're often using it to undercut black people and to say that we don't have a grasp on reality or to say that we're not good at our work or to say that our judgment should not be trusted. And she saw my anger and said, it helped me connect to you, this felt authentic. And it helped me to see that in my own hands, with my own narrative and my own story and my choice to own it, that my anger could make me better at what I did. It could create the context for me to connect. It could power my work and make me a better teacher, make me a better writer, that my anger didn't have to be destructive and that it didn't have to make me less clear, that it could actually make me more clear about what it is that we're fighting for. What led you to Howard University? So I loved Howard because I had learned the story of Thurgood Marshall when I was a high school student. But also when I got ready to apply for colleges, I was actually trying to be like my white counterparts.

And so I didn't apply to any black schools. I think other than billard university down in Southern Louisiana. And Howard called me in the middle of the summer and said, we have a scholarship for you. And you know, look, like I said, I'm a working class black girl. I went where the money was and it was the best decision that I ever made. I just, I continue. I am continually thankful because I, you know, one day at Howard cured so much of the trauma of my childhood having to grow up primarily in classrooms with white children because I got to Howard and on my very first day in class, it was the first time since I had been like six years old that I wasn't presumed to be the smartest black student in the classroom because I was surrounded by black nerds. And I think every kid should have a version of that experience that they don't get it before college, you know, of just knowing that the pressure is not on you to represent all black people. You can become yourself and you can become a better version of yourself. And so so many parts of eloquent rage are also my love letter to Howard. Absolutely.

I understand that you ran for president at Howard. Hi. I ran for president of the Student Association. Yes. And how did that experience affect you moving forward? Yeah. You know, it's formative. Like Howard, student government politics are serious business because when you come to Howard, you know, they're like, we are training you for who you are going to be in the world. And so you spend all of this money running campaigns and having polling teams and the long and short of it is, I lost the election and I was absolutely devastated. And but it shaped me critically in a few ways. It helped me to know that electoral politics is not the thing that I ever need to be doing. Because you really have to like people to do electoral politics and like it, you know, I mean, look, I love our people, but you know, the people person thing I'm less good at. And also though, it was the first time that I had, you know, I had folks saying to me that I didn't look presidential that my hair needed to be done differently, that I needed to wear my makeup a certain way and wear certain kinds of earrings. And so there was this pressure to perform a kind of femininity that was not the way

that I moved through the world. And so it was in some ways my first encounter with a kind of problematic gender politics. And so I talk about that election as being one of the moments in my genesis towards a feminist turn because it was the first time that I hadn't, that I felt like people judged me because of my gender and because of my femininity and ways that I wasn't used to. When you wrote the book, there are many chapters that we can talk and we can just pick a chapter and just talk for hours, but I found it interesting in the chapter with strong female leads. Why was that important for you to include in the book? Yeah, so one of the things I'm trying to work through, particularly writing this book in the aftermath of 2016 is what happens in the election of 2016 with Hillary Clinton. So I try to get at that by thinking about my own relationships with young white women as a little girl and the ways that I love that I believe in the girl power story. And so if you ask me the kind of things I like culturally, I'm always watching television

shows that Netflix says have strong female leads in them, but I, you know, don't particularly have lots of personally close relationships with white women. So it's weird to like lots of shows where white women are at the helm of them. And so I use that as a context to sort of think about what happens with Hillary Clinton and the fact that I thought Hillary Clinton should have won the presidency. I voted for her in the primaries and it was interesting to have that stance when many of the folks in my more radical feminist communities were like, but her politics are right. And she and Bill Clinton are deeply racist and, you know, and so we shouldn't trust them. And I thought, sure, like show me an American white politician who has not been racist in some significant ways and we'll not be talking about American politics if that's the case, but also trying to hold that I learned this complexity and childhood that you could be. I had to have a childhood where I was friends with people who were often had racially problematic politics and I still had to learn to relate to them on a human level.

And I think that that set of skills shaped the way that I engage with Hillary Clinton. But I didn't think that she was right on race anymore than I think the vast majority of white people in America are right on race because very often they don't have the tools more are they challenged to get right and to do right around racial politics. But for me, that has never been the only marker about whether about the kinds of choices we make in terms of who leads because our black folks, we've never had that luxury. And so it bothered me greatly that Hillary Clinton was helped with standard that we didn't we have not yet held any other American politician to. And so I thought it was really important to say that that you can both be deeply clear about the kind of racial challenges that many white people face if they have not been forced to reckon with their privilege and also say at the same time that candidates like Hillary Clinton deserved a shot at the presidency that she was qualified and that I think that it's good feminist politics to say that and that I don't think it undercuts the feminism that I believe in to say that I think that that particular woman should be running this

country. Dr. Cooper, I found it interesting and I didn't even notice it when Michelle Obama showed up at the Trump inauguration in a ponytail. How did you detect what was going on there? Yeah, I mean, look, this is my read of what happened. I just remember that the first time I saw her and I was, you know, I began texting my friends. I was like, do you all see Michelle's hand? Because Michelle Obama is a fashion icon and her hair is absolutely, you know, amazing always done, you know, fried dye and laid to the side as we say in the South, like always, you know, all this body and bounce and is gorgeous. And she just kind of had the kind of elegant pin up, the kind of elegant quick up do and not the kind of pop and circumstance that I would imagine as her last formal act as first lady. And so when I saw that hair, I was like, you know, I know black girls hair if I know anything and I know that that ain't the kind of hair you do in this formal moment. And so I read it as her, you know, calling BS and saying, this is a hot mess. What is about to happen?

I need y'all to know that I see what it is and I'm not here for it. And so she just looked done. She just looked completely over it. And so I argue that that too is an act of eloquent rage that it is an act of dissent from handing over the American homeland to a fascist who is going to tear rise all of us. And I, you know, and I think when you see a woman like Michelle Obama, who is always tight, come to the left inauguration and her hair is thrown up in a kind of messy bun ponytail and she's pulled, she looks perfectly nice, but she's just pulled a dress out the closet looks like it's shown up. You know, like that's when that's the way the subtle ways that black women communicate that they are absolutely done with the situation. And that's when it red light to me. Speaking of hair, you had a hair experience at a pool party when you were younger. Yeah, I, you know, I talk in, look, I think so many black girls have this experience where, you know, I had all the hair as a kid and I had a perm and that meant that you couldn't just get in the pool, you know, because that chlorine over a relaxer will do terrible damage to black girls hair.

And so I'm in the pool with all my little white friends trying to keep my hair from getting wet because I also don't want to get fussed at when I get home. And there's all these white mamas around the pool and they're whispering, you know, it's just hair and I don't know. And why is her mama so strict and my mom is not there to defend herself because she wouldn't be around the pool at 330 in the afternoon because she's at work. And so she gets there, you know, and has to just, you know, she doesn't abrade me, but she just says, okay, babe, you know, we'll wash, wash her hair. And so then it becomes a two or three hour ordeal on a Friday night to wash my hair to make sure that no chlorine kind of damages it. And I just talk about that experience as one of the differences between the lives of black girls and the lives of the white girls even when, you know, we're friends is that this is the way that culture and power in levels of access show up in moments that are deeply formative. And the ways that little black girls have to sort of navigate not being understood in these life spaces where white people take their experiences, being them the ones. How did you handle the drama, the directed violence that was going on in your house over

particularly with your dad because you were almost not here, yeah, I tell the very harrowing and devastating story of the circumstances of my birth where my mom, a former partner of my mom, the man she was dating before she met my dad, it was deeply jealous and angered with her for moving on. And so when she was just a few weeks pregnant with me, that man tried to, he shot both she and my father and tried to kill them. And they both survived the attack and, you know, weeks later my mom found that she was pregnant with me. I had also survived that attack. But so that was a separate man and then, you know, and then I grew up in a context where my father also struggled with alcohol, struggled with alcoholism and with himself deeply violent to my mother. And one of the goals that I, you know, and trying to work through in that chapter is how black women can reckon with the violence that we have, many of us, many, many of us have

experienced as the hands of black men without throwing black men away without casting black men as monsters. And sometimes we don't tell that story because we're so afraid that black men will be pathologized in a world that already says, you know, terrible things about who black men are. But this is black women's opportunities to tell our story and hold our truth. And so in trying to zoom out to the structural places that I feel like the men in my community and in my life got their messages about what it means to be a man. I try to also hold the complexity of my father's story that he wasn't a particularly great father to me. And he was a terrible partner to my mother. But when I was mine, my father got killed and he got killed protecting his then girlfriend and her children from another man with a gun. And so to me, it becomes a powerful story about like when, when black men say, well, you know, what brothers get abused too or patriarchy, you know, you know, abuses us too. I say, yeah, you're, you know, who are you telling, right?

Like, I know what it is to both have been victimized by violent men and also to have lost men that I love and cared about at the hands of other violent men. And for me, that means that we have a charge to challenge toxic masculinity in our communities and to give black men a different set of scripts around how to engage their emotional lives, how to engage their desire for power that don't involve them killing other men and or killing women and children. How did you work through the pain, understanding that your dad, empathy for someone else? He also had empathy for, you know, the Nigerian girls, but not you and your mom. Yeah. I mean, look at, you know, I don't, I don't know that that's a pain that I will ever fully get over. What I hope is that in telling the story, folks can see that even the men that we think our monsters are often deeply complex people. And I do think that our justice project is black people means that we've got to figure

out how to hold the complexity of our truth. And so I try to do that in honoring my dad, even as I have many issues with my dad. I also think that part of what I hope is that we can create the space to have real conversations. One of the things I've been thinking about recently and said in another conversation the other day is I do think based upon who my dad was that had he lived and had the benefit of some life and some help with his alcohol addiction. I do think if he could read the story that I told and read how deeply his actions affected my life, I see enough humanity in his story to believe that he actually would apologize, that he actually would hold, that he actually could hold his destruction and that he would take responsibility for it. That is the thing that I hope would be true for his story. And for me, for me, that's a healing idea. I found it fascinating when you wrote about the young man that knew your dad and come to find out that he was a very smart individual, didn't have to tell you for tests and that

DNA is in you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was such a crazy encounter to be a kid and there's a way to so other people, I was like, well, who are your people? I'm telling this teacher who my people are and he says, I know your dad and he tells me this story, picking my dad up on the road one day and he was like, he was a really smart cat. And I didn't think the cat's like him, we cared about starving children in Africa and all of this kind of stuff. And so that became one of my keys to the journey of trying to figure out who my dad really was beyond who I, who I got to see him to be. And so I do what I hope and what I said to my mom is I think I got the best parts of both her and my dad. What I'm interested in, I want to be generous because I think that we're all struggling with things and I'm not interested in trying to demonize black men. I'm trying to figure out how to hold these truths and how to hold that pain, but how

to hold it in ways that feel transformative. And I'm not asking any other woman to be so generous to the men in her lives. I just know to the men in her life, but I just know that for me that I have been haunted in my life by seeing my dad as a monster. And so being able to understand him is something other than that beyond the kind of monstrous acts that I experienced when he has, you know, it's at least part of the journey. And if we're going to be really true to our politics, then, you know, systems of racism and capitalism and patriarchy, they create, they turn men into monsters and that's why we got to undo these systems. If we want the boys and men in our lives to have a different set of possibilities beyond being violent and trying to dominate women as a way to feel powerful and seen in the world and as a way to feel valuable, valuable in the world, then that happens at the level of systemic change, but perhaps until we can get there, what we can have is the context for

some personal reckoning with each other that is at the same time deeply loving. I found it interesting when you talk about your mom reading a lot of books, Jeff, Ebony, Essence, and got to a point where she turned her life around and got to where she was a happy individual. You know, I try to hold that even though I'm a little bit of get self-help kind of stuff because I feel like it, as I said, you know, makes, it makes women internalize the problems with themselves. Dr. Brittany Cooper, Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, an author of Elequent Rage, a Black feminist discovers a superpower we will conclude our conversation on next week's program. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions asked your future in Black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over.

Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary, those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for a production assistant, Delia Jones, and technical producer, David Alvarez, I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.