It’s the most violent thing I’ve seen happen to a woman that was shot in color. “Anyone see that Ray Rice tape? I can’t stop watching it. “That it might, in many cases, be worse for us,” laments Cooper, “seems to many men a preposterous supposition.” I. In her best-selling Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, scholar and Crunk Feminist Collective cofounder Brittney Cooper writes, “Black men grow up believing and moving through the world politically as though they have it the toughest, as though their pain matters most, as though Black women cannot possibly be feeling anything similar to the dehumanization and disrespect they have felt.” There is little to no consideration of what those of us who are harmed by misogyny, and maybe hurt even worse, might endure. Many of us hold the biggest space for our men (and sometimes our boys, but rarely at the expense of the men) in our collective hearts because we feel like they need it more than anyone else.īlack America’s version of “the big lie”-“the Black ass lie”-is that Black men have it worse than any other group of Black people.
This could just be chalked up to sexism and various other-phobias, but I think it’s deeper than that. But “the Black man” is too often coded language for “the cishet Black man” and the degree to which any and all other groups of Black people are suffering-that is up for debate.
