#GAReads | Author Brittney Cooper on Harnessing Rage, Right Now

Brittney Cooper. Photo credit: TED Conference [CC BY-NC 2.0], via Flickr

“Author Brittney Cooper on Harnessing Rage, Right Now”:

The “angry black woman” stereotype has been picked apart and widely condemned in recent years. Michelle Obama has spoken about distancing herself from the trope. Shonda Rhimes, the Hollywood showrunner, has fought back against the label too. When Serena Williams was penalized for “verbal abuse” of an umpire in 2018, there was repudiation of the stereotype again.

But Brittney Cooper, a scholar and activist, has urged black women to reclaim the label rather than reject it entirely. “The clarity that comes from rage should also tell us what kind of world we want to see, not just what kind of things we want to get rid of,” Dr. Cooper writes in “Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower.”

Read Malcolm Burnley’s full article at The New York Times here…