Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower in Our Shared Shelf

Jan 09, 2019 Rachel rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

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Jun 26, 2018 MM rated it it was amazing

In the spirit of Audre Lorde, bell hooks and others, this is one of those books I instantly want to recommend to everybody. Pretty much all the essays are excellent.

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Mar 26, 2018 JaNel rated it really liked it

Shelves: interest

Eloquent rage, indeed. She beautifully puts into words some ideas that are pretty difficult to capture…

I especially found the chapter White-Girl Tears enlightening…

P. 187 – – "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 frequentl Eloquent rage, indeed. She beautifully puts into words some ideas that are pretty difficult to capture…

I especially found the chapter White-Girl Tears enlightening…

P. 187 – – "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 and allows them to get away with shit that women of color pay royally for."
– – "Many black men struggle to acknowledge that they experience male privilege… Famed black feminist theorist Patricia hill Collins has called it "subjugated masculinity." This means...that they are frustrated patriarchs
P. 191 – – "Bill Cosby's crimes make far more sense… He's become the self-filling prophecy of a white supremacist worst lies about black male sexuality. White folks needed monsters to justify their hatred, and white supremacy plus patriarchy created just the kind of primordial stew that could bring forth such creatures.…" because he bought into the white supremacists' logic that the black woman is the symbol of slavery and the white woman is the symbol of freedom. So every time he put his arms around a white woman, he was trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system or values....
P. --on the subject of cultural appropriation, Jesse Williams said at the 2016 BET awards "we're done watching and waiting while this invention called, whiteness, uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, or entertainment like oil – Black Gold, Go to wising and demeaning or creations than stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit."
P. 197...."... The idea of the "welfare queen" is itself a myth, created by Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he began telling stories about a completely fabricated group of system abusers that he called welfare queens. He named a nonexistent social phenomenon based on a singular incident of abuse of welfare benefits by one woman in Chicago in the 1970s. But white people who resented the racial and class progress of the 1960s found a convenient target in heating allegedly undeserving black women… White male politicians on both the right and the semi left used cultural enmity toward black women to mobilize a conservative backlash against the 1960s."

P. 203... in the 2016 elections, white fear ruled the day.… Donald Trump deftly used the narrative of national belonging to make some groups, namely white male voters across class lines, feel visible, heard, and affirmed. All voters should have access to candidates that make them feel recognized, but there's a problem when your notion of recognition is predicated on someone else's exclusion. There's a problem when visibility becomes a zero sum game, and renders every other group's political concerns obscure. Only white supremacy demands such exacting and fatalistic math."
P. 203... White rage is deeply connected to a fear of losing privilege and status in a browning American empire… when your entire world view is predicated on being on top, sinking from the top even a little bit can feel like annihilation.
P. 204... if you're black, white fear is frequently lethal.… My approach to life is to view feelings as employees that can't be trusted which is to say, my feelings are subject to intense micromanagement.… I am quick to put my feelings in a time out when I feel they are getting out of hand. Frankly, I resent others who allow their feelings to roam around unmanaged, demanding everybody's attention (and causing great harm to others with no Real inspection or responsibility)
--she describes how African-Americans, especially black girls, don't have the luxury for intense black girl emotions – – at least not showing them… "If you are black and hope to live to adulthood, micromanaging your feelings is necessary for survival. Your feelings can't karate chop every white retail service person who follows you around the store, is rude to you on the phone, or takes their good sweet time bringing your food to your table."
P. 209... White fear is not subject to any such cultural or religious scrutiny. In fact, white fears are routinely treated as fact rather than fantasy. White fears rest on the presumption that they are rooted in fact; everyone who is non-white is treated as though their fears are the stuff of fantasy."
P. 210..."White fear is the cultural refuse of white supremacy. Strewn about and never properly disposed of, it becomes an environmental hazard for those of us who must live in here…"
P. ..."letting fear rule you if you were a regular person is dangerous. 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… That black lives are at the mercy of those emboldened and sanctioned by the state to enact the worst of their fantasies upon us is enough to make us lose faith in the whole damn system."
P. 214 "recently I found out that I had been placed on a "professional watchlist" for national nonprofit organization whose mission is to remove "liberal bias" from the college classroom. But they mean by "liberal bias" is that they don't want a black woman standing in a classroom, teaching college students that racism is real, sexism is a problem, homophobia is repugnant, and capitalism and the elitism it begets are worthy of our deepest skepticism. ...more

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Jun 14, 2019 Xanthe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, essays, poc-protagonist, poc-author, contemporary, read-in-2019

It took me several months to read Eloquent Rage, not because it was a slog. Quite the opposite! I read each essay by Brittany Cooper and was swamped by waves of outrage and anger on her behalf, swept away with feelings of sympathy and admiration of her ease and mastery of language. She is eloquent and she wields her eloquence in service of painting vivid pictures of what it's like to grow up as a smart black girl, what it's like to truly see and understand why black people react they way they do ...more

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