40 pages • 1 hour read
Brittney CooperEloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Orchestrated Fury”
Content Warning: This section of the book includes depictions of and references to racialized violence, violence against women and girls, and sexual assault. It also includes pejorative terms for Black people and women.
Cooper writes, “You have to be twice as good to get half as far, and Never let ’em catch you slippin’” (154), distillations of Black respectability as a formula for success. The Obamas exemplified Black respectability and still got pilloried in the media, which cast them as threatening, angry Black people; Donald and Melania Trump violated every respectable norm and still gained the White House. In the United States, Black rage is viewed as threatening, while white rage is labeled patriotic. Respectable Black people express disgust with the double standard through subtle gestures such as Michelle Obama’s casual hairdo and dress on the Obamas’ last day at the White House. Hair, clothing, and style aren’t frivolous. Cooper learned this at her mother’s knees during nightly hair-braiding and grooming sessions that communicated the love and care Cooper’s mother had for her daughter.
Meticulous grooming and style have political implications, but Black “respectability is a rage-management project” (165), not an answer to systemic causes of inequality. On the other hand, the disruptive anger of Black women created the Black Lives Matter Movement, made Audre Lorde write, and gave a Black high-school student the bravery to defy the school resource officer who later body-slammed her for refusing to turn over her phone. When harnessed, Black disruption and anger are political forces to be reckoned with.
Chapter 8 Summary: “White-Girl Tears”
The Women’s March after the Donald Trump’s 2016 election was “a public profusion of white-lady tears” (172)—a public display of white female fragility or emotion, which accomplished very little. Cooper regarded it with disdain since white women didn’t turn out the white female vote for Hillary Clinton. White women ultimately learned the limitations of white female fragility and using public outbursts of emotion to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Still, Cooper addresses how white female fragility is a potent tool of white supremacy that has served as a pretext for violence against Black people, including many men and some women. This reality doesn’t make Black men better allies to Black women. “Black masculinity shaped in a toxic stew of white male rage and white-lady tears” (188) shows up as misogynoir (racialized misogyny) and validation of white women’s tears by Black men.
The unholy union of toxic Black masculinity and white female fragility explains why a Black man jumped to defend white rapper Iggy Azalea when Black women called her out for appropriating Black style, music, and culture. It shows up in interracial dating. Too many Black men think that dating white women is empowering and dating Black women is not. Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Panther Party, said as much, and one needs a shower after reading his statements. The union explains the wall-to-wall coverage of Bill Cosby’s trial for sexually assaulting women (many of them white) and virtually no coverage of Daniel Holtzclaw, a police officer who sexually assaulted several Black and Asian women.
No one is proof against these cultural forces. Cooper gave Cosby a pass after his so-called “Pound-Cake” speech on national television, during which he blamed the racial inequality on a lack of respectable Black behavior. She even gave him leeway when initial stories about his abuse of women circulated because she knew false accusations of this kind served as pretexts for stripping prominent Black men of power (or their lives). Cooper eventually turned on Cosby, but the delay reflects that Black women, too, are guilty of prioritizing racial affiliation over sisterhood at times. An obliviousness to the privilege that Black men have over Black women and that white women have over Black women complicates alliances and intimate relationships.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Never Scared”
White people’s fear of Black people grows out of the irrationality of white supremacy. Black people have virtually no institutional power, so their anger and fear have little impact on white people. The opposite is not true. To survive and prosper, Black people have learned to manage their fear in ways that white people have not. Cooper learned fear management as a child at home alone during her mother’s working hours. She learned it in church, where managing fear of the unknown is a tenet of Black spirituality and respectability. Respectable fear management is so invested in individual action rather than systemic change that all it does is reinforce the status quo.
If Black people, and Black women in particular, want change, they would do better to embrace disruption. Cooper has found this power in crunk music, Southern Hip Hop that is a source of a disruptive “lyrical and bodily vocabulary” (216) that has allowed her to confront dangerous white fear. Beyoncé’s album Lemonade, which includes the assertive tracks “Flawless,” “Formation,” and “I Ain’t Sorry,” also exemplifies what happens when Black women confront their fear through movement and music.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Cooper turns her attention to the many ways that seemingly personal emotions and individual choices are instances of systemic forces at work in society. While she includes some personal stories in the process, she also focuses on institutions such as the electoral system and figures such as the Obamas to show that the personal is political, especially in the lives of public figures.
In Chapter 7, “Orchestrated Fury,” Cooper examines Black behavioral norms that arise from Black respectability politics, which hold that if you talk, look, and act like members of the dominant class, you will be allowed to be successful. Cooper debunks this belief system through an analysis of the Obama presidency and the Trump presidency that followed. Cooper decodes Michelle Obama’s grim demeanor and plain hairstyle during the changeover from the Obama presidency to the Trump presidency to critique the political efficacy of Black respectability politics.
What Mrs. Obama’s hairstyle said was, “Do y’all see this shit?” (150)—an interpretation of Michelle Obama’s style that relies on diction she assiduously avoided in public during all eight years of the Obama presidency, hoping to fend off accusations that she was the “Angry Black Woman.” Cooper tells a story about a harried Black mother moving out of her house and deciding to put on a plain dress to help readers see the iconic Michelle Obama as a Black woman who, like Cooper’s readers, has to deal with mundane aggravations and navigating the narrow space left her by Black respectability. The implication is that if the wife of one of the most powerful Black men in the United States has to deal with policing of her body and style, there is no amount of respectability in the world that will ensure Black women’s right to self-expression. Mrs. Obama’s choices appear to be individual ones, but they tell the reader much about the way systems shape Black women’s social identities.
In Chapter 8, “White-Girl Tears,” Cooper pulls together many disparate political and cultural phenomena—the Women’s March, reactions to the Cosby trial, interracial dating, white female singers appropriating and abandoning Black style and vernacular at will. From the title to the vision of Cooper “eat[ing] white-lady tears for breakfast, lunch, and dinner” (174), Cooper’s mode is provocation and “eloquent rage.” Cooper presents herself as disdainful, upset, exasperated, angry, sad, and impatient in this essay. Including those emotions allows her to build common cause with her readers, but it also helps illuminate just why Black women are so angry. The result of intersecting oppressions and social identities is that Black men and white women get leeway that Black women do not. Rage—Cooper’s and what she invokes in the reader—is useful for teasing out this reality.
As Cooper observes elsewhere, undirected, unfocused rage and intense emotions can be harmful. In Chapter 9, “Never Scared,” Cooper encourages her readers to consider whether consistently tamping down rage is an effective way to disarm white supremacist fear of Black rage. The title of the essay, taken from the 2003 crunk anthem by Bone Crusher (with assists from other crunk royalty) anticipates Cooper’s focus on crunk as a space where her readers can find an alternative text for responding to fear. Cooper’s emotional, pop-culture-packed analysis shows just how useful a commitment to disruption can be.
