Thick: And Other Essays

McMillan Cottom criticizes David Brooks writing 865 words about how gourmet sandwiches are ruining America, which she notes is “593 more words than the Gettysburg Address” (200). Brooks writes bad essays that often miss the larger point or misread data, but he has a prominent platform regardless of how bad his takes are. She draws attention to how White men are given space to share boring, mundane, and often wrong opinions and are taken seriously anyway. This is a privilege denied to Black women. When she posts of Twitter, a flood of comments come in pointing to Black women writing for prestige publications. She clarifies that she wants someone doing this as a full-time job, not a professor writing on the side, but someone who is paid well to have opinions.

Class is a core concern of McMillan Cottom’s. She highlights that she means a prestige publication because this has class implications. Americans believe in meritocracy, which leads to a widespread belief that poor people are to blame for their poverty. This claim circulates in the Black community too, despite years of systemic oppression. Because of this, some media publications matter more, elite publications confer more legitimacy. The Black women thinkers that McMillan Cottom knows publish as part of their public intellectual work, as a second, third or even forth job. McMillan Cottom does the work of writing for public audiences because she feels like it matters, but it is her job as a professor that pays her health insurance. While McMillan Cottom is prominent, people do not have to engage with her to be considered legitimate public intellectuals. Instead, “A Professional Smart Person can be so without ever reading a black woman, ever interviewing a black woman, ever following a black woman, or ever thinking about a black woman’s existence” (219). Being a Black woman does not mean that someone is a superhero or has all the answers, but they provide a perspective that is important and valid. Too often, Black women have to defend their rationality and their humanity. When Michelle Alexander is hired by the NYT, McMillan Cottom highlights her excessive qualifications. While many White people in opinion roles are bloggers or independent iconoclasts, Alexander is a serious, award-winning writer who wrote a best-selling book. This reflects the reality that Black women are, on average, over-educated for their professional positions. McMillan Cottom concludes by saying that her next complaint is that there are not any serious left-leaning women of color at these publications.