 there we go all right my goodness look at these beautiful faces I'm so excited y'all are here my name is Mia bird song I am a new America fellow and this woman to my right your left is of course Brittany Cooper in case you don't know Brittany is a professor of Africana and gender studies at Rutgers University co-founder of the Crunk Collective and she wrote this book which you can purchase out there and later get signed so we are gonna have a conversation today with Brittany and then I'm bringing some of my favorite other favorite people up on stage to continue the conversation and we're just gonna talk about how badass black women are so we're doing here y'all so Brittany you this book just came out how long did you spend writing this book six years y'all yeah Lord okay and I don't think I've done anything for six years so tell us we're just getting right into it I'm not gonna talk about tell us what inspired you to write this um yes so thank you Mia I'm really grateful to you for organizing this event thank you to my family who is in the audience so I have two college classmates who are in the audience airbelville page and mckisha mclary so part of the reason I want to acknowledge them is because they're oh and then and then Nicole Mason was also my colleague and Howard alum part of the reason I wanted to acknowledge them is because Howard is really a part of this story so I love Howard I will put you out of my house if you talk to me about Howard in any but the most illustrious what if you're not a Howard alum if you're a Howard alum you can talk all kind of shit it's like family that's right yeah so when I was at Howard we learned about the history of all of these illustrious black leaders because the campus is sort of teeming with that history but I didn't learn about all of these amazing black women so when I was at Howard Anna Julia Cooper was a name on a street sign over off T Street Holly Murray was not somebody whose name I knew it all Mary church tarot who lived also down on T Street was not a person that I knew so I left Howard I went into a PhD program and I was taking my first course in black feminist thought and I began to read Beverly got chef tall's book words of fire as part of that course and so it began to name all of these amazing black women in their thought and as I learned more about the bios of these women I realized that they all had connections to Howard they were Howard alum or they lived around the corner and I wondered how I had gone to this amazing place and had never heard of them and so it set me on fire one as part of my own coming into feminist consciousness that if I wanted black people to get free but I didn't even know what black women had to say about that then my liberation project was going to be incomplete and to the black women have been bad asses from the beginning and I wanted to know what the what the long intellectual legacy of that looks like and I also had this distinct sense particularly being an academic the people were very enamored with white boys and the way that they do theory and I say white boys because I'm from the south and also y'all know why I'm calling the white boys right and and so I was like black women are not new to this they're true to this they've been doing this they have a lot to say about the American project and all of its problems and possibilities and I want people to take black women seriously as theorists and I felt like when I looked at the history people were talking about how they were amazing how they were activists and organizers and church leaders and mothers and yet they had these whole bodies of thought and nobody was taking any of that work seriously in a sustained way and I wanted to be able to one understand that and then make the case that we should so what are some of those thoughts that black women develop that we need to know about sure so this book spans about almost it spans 75 years so I started in 1892 I go to the mid 1970s the introductions of the book begins with Anna Julia Cooper because it's cool as shit to me that I get to know who the very first black woman Dr. Cooper was and so but also when I read her book of voice from the south and she was grappling with what it meant to be a Christian what it meant to be a black woman from the south what it meant to be a feminist and to not be particularly enamored with black men you know I fell in love with her and have come back to that book over and over again in my journey so I begin with her and I use her as the theorist that frames this book and I say that the way that and so I say that I'm an a cuparian scholar that I'm an Anna Julia Cooper I think an Anna Julia Cooper approach to understanding black women's lives and then so I excavate a few black women Fanny Barry or Williams with this dope black woman from Chicago part of the I think our people from BC but she moves to Chicago she's part of the elite and she's really a top-notch theorist but she can't go to school you know because black women in the late 1890s don't have that much access to college education and to PhDs but one of the things that she says and these are her words she says we need a new sociality right we need a new theory of social relationships among black people so she came from the upper class but she recognized that there needed to be a way for black people to understand each other across class divide and so she said look we need a new racial sociality a way of relating to each other that is about getting free that is not tied to our varied class position now we can talk about whether you agree but the point is that she's advancing a theory in 1897 where she's using the kind of academic language that now gets taken up in feminist thought as a sex theory that talks all the time about sociality right and yet she's sort of saying class divides keep black people apart and so what is the basis by which black people can create solidarity if it's not based on like essentialist ideas about blackness right so that's one and she says many other things to I talk about Mary church Carol Mary church Carol came from a rich family in Memphis she lived down on T Street she was probably the most famous black woman of her day the most well-known public intellectual she lived to be 95 90 she lived to be 90 she was born in 1863 she brought the case that desegregated the District of Columbia in 1953 that's one year before Brown but she had literally 60 years of activism in the ensuing period so many first too many to name and so she said she believed in dignified agitation now she was the queen of respectability and she was kind of shady to poor black women in the ways that we might imagine these rich black girls to be but she said look like we should take it to white people we should be in their faces we should agitate agitate agitate there's no pretty way to do it but she said look but there's we can be dignified about it right we don't have to tear things down but we should be in you we should be on them about our rights at all times and so I argue that that theory which she starts in around 1905 and what she's still talking about in 1951 at the height of the desegregation cases in DC links together the sort of respectability era that we're so sort of you know we're skeptical about now and nonviolent direct action so she has a theory that brings those two things together she says look I believe in agitation I just believe there's a dignified way to do it right and then I talk about Pauli Murray people are talking about Pauli Murray more now she literally has too many firsts to name when I started this dissertation people were as this book is a dissertation people weren't talking about Pauli Murray she graduated top of her class at Howard Law in 1944 but she was the first to do many things one of the things maybe most relevant in terms of her actual body of work is she as a senior at Howard Law School her last year her thesis for Howard Law she created the theory for Brown versus Board she wrote it as a paper and then ten years later the law professors who worked who who tried Brown were her professors you know we had a student ten years ago who came up with this innovative theory then maybe what we should do is just challenge Pussy B Ferguson as a whole because at that point they were just saying we want separate but equal and we need y'all to make things equal and she said well Pussy B Ferguson itself is a problem right and so they took her theory they tried the case they wanted and then they didn't tell her that till ten years after the fact but the other thing that's really interesting about Pauli Murray is that she was a queer and out queer black woman from the 1930s forward masculine performing and today she would have identified as trans so Pauli Murray was going around in the 1930s saying give me hormones I need hormone therapy because I'm a man please do exploratory surgery I need you to find the sort of you know biological basis for this the sort of physiological basis for this but she's literally two decades before her time so the word transgender doesn't even get invented until the 1950s and so people certainly aren't thinking about gender affirmation surgeries in the 1930s and so she keeps saying to people I'm not I'm not a lesbian I'm a man right these are the same battles over identity that we're having today and so this woman is so I call her woman because by the end of her life given where medical science was she just says cool I'm a woman I'm queer unfortunately I'm in a time where how I understand my identity doesn't is not understood and so I'm gonna make the best that I make the best of this that I can so she has an open lesbian partnership it makes everybody mad because she's this huge sort of civil rights attorney and she becomes the first black woman apiscopal priest I mean there are literally so many first that I could just shock you I mean every decade the chick was just bad she was just bad right and so you know so I talk about so she's at the four of lots of things she's really at the four of creating sort of one of the frameworks for intersectionality within the law the Kimberly Crenshaw fills in she writes an so she has a JD a couple of masks or master of law the MD and every one of those projects with groundbreaking the MDF thesis she says let me compare feminist theology to black theology but she's doing that 1976 before the term woman is even so yes and then last I end in the civil rights era and I talk about Tony K. Bambara and essentially I mean I talk about many women in the civil rights era but essentially one of the things I say about her is that her concept of black hood is a concept that we should revisit because she says that sort of binary gender roles really are a problem and that what we should think of it's interesting because it's sort of an idea of racial sociology that we should think about black hood as a way for black people to come together that is not rooted in gender norms but is rooted in a sort of commitment to blackness but it's a very progressive notion of blackness right one that is fundamentally queer because it is fundamentally anti-normative but is about so she's about sort of a black feminist revolution but she's trying to think about what is the basis by which black people can form a new set of social relationships to each other not rooted in the respective right and so that's why this book is called beyond respectability because in all of these ways these women never sit they never stay in the space that respectability offers so Williams is challenging the class dynamics of respectability by saying look like I have a social class but I my cause is fundamentally with black people right you know Terrell's look I think we ought to agitate which is not the respectable position I just want to be dignified so she's kind of in the middle Paulie Murray wants to be respectable but it's queer and trans and so can't do it fully ever to anybody's kind of liking and then Tony came on bar just says f respectability right and let's get some black yeah so one of the things you talk about in the book is how you can't how important it is to if you're an understand these women's ideas that you also have to understand their lives and the context and and their personal stories yeah so and you're like in the archives looking through people's like memoirs and writings and diaries and stuff so can you tell us I want to hear stories that don't show up you know kind of in the in the public narrative we have of some of these women that humanize them yeah so that was really important to me to be able to talk about that they weren't just talk about why it's important to like we typically think you know when we see black women in public there's a way in which they cease to be human they're either you know we talk about this right black women are hyper visible and invisible at the same time so all of their flaws all of these stereotypes are on display and that even happens to these very respectable educated polished black women that they too are wondering about the politics of public visibility and so what are they risking by you know by showing up to do the work that they do and risking their lives and risking scrutiny in a moment where black women are actively being raped and terrorized by but they have private lives too in all kinds of sort of battles with each other and interesting takes on relationships and you know I'm so I was interested in all of that and one of the things I tell people is that one of the reasons that I became a historian sort of in the process of doing this project is because archives are where you get all the tea and you can verify it right like all the rumors you read all the juicy letter they're all in there and there's all these sort of battles that people are talking all manner about each other great and so like you know there I'd be well diary has been published I don't tell the story in this book but like I'd be well as a flirt she had like all these male suitors she was running due she had a reputation for being a flirt and she also had a like a shopping habit so I'd be well as love pretty dressy and so sometimes she couldn't make the rent because she spent too much money as dressmaker shop she did now she was you know she was an anti-lynchian activist I mean Ra Ra Ida but she was like and I'm gonna look great which is why you know we didn't just this didn't just start you know this thing where we slay everywhere right or like or like in Mary church tarot archive there's a picture of her mom owned a like dress shop at one point her mom could make really pretty dresses but her mom was a hairdresser she owned like a hair shop and so there's a picture of it it's like 1877 and the sign on the front of it says 100% real human hair sold here and I was like oh my god talking about how they have you know how they have the best hair to you know add pieces for their I forget all the names of them but it's like one style where they have this extra hair right here you know like probably a very nice Bob kind of situation right and they wanted you know human hair and so so those are things but then you know they're these sort of other things right around so like one of the stories that jumped out to me about Mary church tarot because she's so respectable and so buttoned up she talks in her autobiography about how when she was in college she would sneak out of the dorms at night and go dance in the gym I was like well what do you mean and she was like oh no and I could dance as well as anybody and you know I had a girl that I would meet and we would dance and I was like so you would just sneak out of the dorm and go twerk in the middle of the night like because that's essentially what she's doing I mean she's essentially going out and like we're practicing the latest moves or you know whatever the dance steps where she's out doing it and it was really interesting to be able to think about Mary church tarot as someone who insisted on having a bodily practice and a sort of joyful practice around dance and I thought that was important and right about it in this book because she doesn't just talk about it at the beginning of the autobiography but when she's in her 70s when the autobiography and she's like oh no I still dance every day like I'm about that life you know this and so and the other funny story so I tell this story so Rachel was shady and she goes to this conference in the early 1900s and she's real life skin and so sometimes when she would be traveling across the country on the train she would pass for white and we could have feelings about that but she was like what do you mean late night on these trains and these rural southern towns might rape me so I'm just gonna be a white so she goes to Germany no she's no she's an Austria and she gets there and all the women know that a black woman is coming from America to give a talk but they don't know that she's the black woman they think she's white they keep coming up to her going who's the neat where's the negris now think about that and so first so she plays them so she lets them do it for days and she can speak German she can speak German she can be French she can speak Latin she can speak Greek she speaks all of it she teaches it so she lets them do this and so then she was like okay I got it I got it so she was supposed to give the address in like French no she's supposed to give it in English so the night before she was like let me see how I can stuff so she she gets in a hotel room she translates her full address into German and French then on the day of she gets up gives the address in German turns around and gives it in French and that's when she tells them she's black and so she stands up and she's like you know behold you know my parents were in shackles and if it hadn't been for the war of 1865 I wouldn't be standing here before you today and then she says so behold a rare bird right just shady just like just I'm not a common negris don't ever do that shit again right just that's on me she just is the most amazing thing ever and people think it's about respectability and I'm like these white girls have been coming up to her for days calling her a negris and she's like I got something for y'all in multiple languages I'm going to read you in every possible language that I have right and so I love her for that and so a lot of people have written her off because she was you know she just had class though she was bougie in a real way and her people actually had money and so she just didn't have the best class politics in particular moment but there's a way in which she's really important and where I see a lot of the sort of creativity and the the black girl sort of verb that we have today like what I loved about doing this book was you could see that it was generationally created right that a hundred years ago black women would just be being shady one last example so she and Ida B. Wells both hated that Freda doesn't smear the white girl they hated it and the way I know they hated it they didn't say they hated it they but in both of their autobiographies and the two of them didn't like each other may not be well did not like each other cuz Ida thought Mary was bougie and terrible and Mary thought Ida didn't have any class and then she was sort of rough around the edges and so they really didn't get get down but they didn't like that Frederick Douglass had married a white woman so both of them get in their autobiographies and they go like you know look he can marry whoever he wants but Ida was like I really wish he had married you know a beautiful charming woman of our race right and then Mary Tercero was like look I mean I wish he had married a black woman but he has the right to marry whoever he wants but let me just tell you that I've had three white men you know proposed to me and I turned all of them down I was like we've been doing this forever forever you know so particularly for these the women you write about who are like you know they're public figures in the late eight hundred in the early 1900s at a time when the convention around gender was like you know you take the the women's course if you go to college you don't take the man's course because that takes too long you'll be too old that's right and you can't know more than your husband so you're not gonna find a man that's right so these women were negotiating around family and marriage in some really powerful ways at a time yeah I mean you know women still doing that but like for them to talk a little bit about that yeah so it's literally the same problem so Mary Tercero is like I'm at Oberlin I want to take the gentleman's course because you take Latin and Greek and folks are like what unfit you for marriage it will unsex you and no one will want you and so she writes about how she basically feels like to get the education she wants she's risking her entire romantic life and she's the first black woman I know to do that to say I made an educational choice even though I thought it would put partnership in jeopardy and it made me think about the ways that that's still such a question for black women today whether educational options put partnership options in jeopardy but literally she's negotiating that in the 188 right and the thing that becomes interesting is that her husband is very progressive and is like down for woman suffrage very early you know and when they do get married you know he says to her you know she didn't she didn't like speaking because she she was like I'm always traveling it took a toll on her body Mary Tercero had lots of miscarriages a couple of stillbirths like a really hard time trying to have a baby and so you know and struggled with depression greatly and all of that you know and our husband would just one of the things he said to her was you have the ability and you've had the training so you owe it to our people to get out and do this work which is a very progressive stance for a man to take in the 1890s and I to be well husband was very similar and then you and then you have Polly Murray who's also negotiating that too later Polly Murray born in 1910 so she's negotiating this in 1920s and 30s and she's negotiating it in ways that are really interesting so she's out to her family they sort of always know that she's queer which sort of gives life to this notion that black communities are so homophobic right there's a pretty interesting tradition of so one of the things one of the myths that I learned about how to not miss but like things about Howard was that was that at Howard in the 1930s and 40s there were lots of black lesbian girls that they were you know they you know basically the administration was like you know they had these little networks and they're all together and you know we have to watch them and lay it was all of this kind of thing and so Polly Murray is like dating girls you know falling in love she would date black girls and then they would she would kick into them real hard they would fall for her and then they had all this stuff about but I'm really straight though and what does it mean that I love you and all of that and then they would leave her and then she unfortunately she would be like I'm depressed and then go like she would be admitted because she wasn't she really wanted to date a black woman part of it was that she was trans and she was like I'm a man and these women keep on you know and so she didn't deal with being called the homosexual right she was like it's not that right she was like it's my sex it's not my gender that's the problem and then you know so then she fell for a white girl who she loved and there are these great if you go in the archive there are these great pictures of Polly Murray in very masculine pose with her very white thin partner but in the 1930s right and then you know that girl is like I'm gonna get married too because you know I guess it's just easier and so but she's sort of negotiating that and so one of the things that that that then causes for her like so there's a moment in the 1940s where you know bus desegregation actually happens much earlier than the 1950s right so in 1941 Polly Murray's on a bus to Petersburg Virginia she and they ask her and her partner to move back a seat she won't cuz they're like the seat is broken and so they get arrested but when they get arrested she gives her name to the officer as Oliver because she's on the bus it's not clear whether this girl is her girl or her home girl but there it becomes a whole thing because they get arrested they asked the NAACP to take it as an early desegregation case NAACP looks at it because they have been looking for opportunities to challenge desegregation statues like they eventually do with with Rosa Park and they couldn't do it or they opted not to do it because it turned out that she was queer and they didn't want the social sort of stigma around it but you know but they were but there was a guy who wrote a piece about it a white guy who was on the bus and he was like oh no this straight couple got hassled by the cops and so later the NAACP was like oh this is scandalous because people don't even know that you're a woman I mean it was the whole sort of thing right so she is really committed to her right to embody herself and her gender identity in whatever way she wants even in the early 1940s and yet it but think about what how much farther than the civil rights struggle we would have been if homophobia and queer phobia right hadn't prevented the NAACP from taking her case right but also the ways and what I love about that story as well is the ways in which it shows that even in a respectability discourse where black women are really hyper aware of what it means to be in public then she was like I'm gonna be in public with my partner I'm gonna be in public with somebody that you know that matters to me in a loving way and I'm not going to be gender conforming while I do it and so there's something about that that really resists that respectability narrative in a moment of very heightened racial violence right that comes literally to her doorstep and you know but but this is these are just the sort of creative ways that black women continue to you know continue to navigate and to say my personal life matters and then and then she of some years later writes a piece called why me girl girl stay single and she's like oh because all you dudes are out here tripping and y'all are trying to be you know she basically said look y'all are less educated than us you feel some type of way about it and then you come home and treat us crazy because you feel some type of way about it and that's why I mean she says it but like go read it and I was like well did you write this today man like so they've been like this the great thing is you know there's real historical context for it the problem is your life with 70 years ago it was it was still bad yes yeah so you spent six years writing this book you are you are you know you're in the archives you're reading the theory you're reading about these ideas you're reading these stories how did it change you fully know the answer I feel I feel vindicated in that when I started this I remember when I was shopping the book proposal around and folks are like well that sounds like stuff that we've been saying you know people have been saying that black women are thinkers and I was like well show me the receipt then like can you tell me something that you noted a black woman said that you teach in a class that you teach and nobody could tell me that but they could talk to me about Du Bois and King and Booker T Washington and all those people all day long but they couldn't they kept saying that they knew but I was like but act like you know right and so so this process helped me to know this process helped me to know that my instincts were right that there was a story here you know and I think I feel in good company you know I feel like part of the work that I'm trying to do in the world is really to continue the legacy of these women and I felt like when I was in the archives when I was reading their stories they showed up and met me and said the struggle is real girl it's been real yes but we made it and we made a lasting impact and it's one that if you just look just a little bit and I you know and I feel like I got to tell that story I think the other thing to say is that I'm tired and it's really important to say that because sometimes we don't own that the work takes its toll and so when I read about I looked at Polly Murray's medical records and there was a little bit of challenge sometimes you know when writing about her her family members didn't always want that sort of stuff to be told but Polly Murray left her archive she specifically left it she wrote about I'm over here filing these things away from my archive because even and she would say things like I know that people don't appreciate me now but I'm gonna be real important right and she's right and you know but she but when I looked but I was like so I know that there's a reason that you left a neat file with all of your medical records collected because she wanted us to have a history of the cost and the toll that she paid for the legacy that she left but also I think as an affirmation though that she made it you know that she struggled and that she but also that she went into the hospital but that she came out each time and so there's you know so I appreciate that she challenged the stigma of mental illness and recognizing that so many sisters Mary church throughout same thing struggled deeply with depression because how can you lose that many babies and not struggle right but she owned it you know and Mary church throw begin begins her autobiography by saying you know I almost didn't make it here because my mama tried to kill herself when she was pregnant so she names of multi generational history that challenges this idea that black with like it's like yes black girls are magic and also they've struggled and shit hurts yes you know and so it's important for me to say like it six years writing this book took a lot out of me and I think the point is that I know from these women to take care of myself and I'm doing that but also that part of the work of bridging that public private divide is not making people think that the magic is that you don't ever get tired up here being tired so I'm gonna invite some more of my friends up and really this is just like for me to hang out with my friends and I also want to turn these chairs some because we don't need to be in a straight line Brittany can you turn yours a little bit I'll make sure I can see everybody there we go so you have before you all your panels we're like there's lots to say about and you may recognize her from such photographs with a lollipop yeah as 50 what does it say tell us what it says right she's also the director of get equal and then we have Jessica bird who is a political strategist and founder of three-point strategies which works at the intersection of racial justice and electoral politics she's out here running black women to run for mayor and everything all the things we need to be running because that's why we're here to tell you all about how black women run everything and then my my dear friend Sabrina her see is the who is a human rights technologist and she works with startups and foundations so I'm gonna start with you Angela hi can you talk about what it means so so one of the things that Brittany talks about in her book is this way in which black women bring their bodies to bear for the work of black liberation and I feel like the way that you show up as an activist is often involves like your physical self and I think that's a thing so can you talk a little bit about that and what it means for you to be a black queer woman who is bringing yourself into your activism bringing your whole self and your physical body into your activism yeah thank you for that question me and thank you all for being here you all of great but I've been thinking about that question a lot sort of in the context of sort of where we are and where I am in history right so recognizing I'm 30 I have had a long life of my life a lot of it has been doing organizing and activism work but thinking about sort of in this particular moment what does it mean to feel know that there are lots of things are happening with my body in my body and as a person there's this idea like having children it's a misnomer I like this is the time to do that and also like I don't know what happens after 30 I feel like there's another sort of puberty ish shit but I think that feeling much more aware of my body and the power that it holds and also recognizing that even the women's march is a great example right I didn't go to the women's march to do a direct action I didn't go to I went probably to be a little bit petty but also I carried the signs to be a little bit petty but I also went because I live in DC I've been here for 10 years I experienced what seeing the sort of Trump administration come in and like feeling like our city was being taken over I sort of hope that I felt myself needing to be in a place where of being restored re-energized you know sort of cared for and I didn't necessarily have that experience at the women's march but I also held the sign because I felt like just my presence literally just me being there was a direct action was a disruption and it it's it came forward to bear right literally just me being there with the signs a statement that was on my mind the whole since 20 since 11 o'clock on November 2008 needing to bring that and really realizing that just with my body I could carry that message that was a lot clearer than any word any policy statement any sort of even direct action and Jessica you are working with black women who are occupying political space right so they are running as candidates right now which is both amazing and in some ways like kind of terrifying can you talk about what that work has been like and what it's been like to the experience of the experience both for you but also for the women who whose campaigns you're helping with to run for public office right now hi hi thank you for having me and just to be here with all of you I was joking when we were in the green room before that Chani Deorey Chani Nichols yes so she you have to she read her horoscope religiously and she told me that this week was a really big week for me and that too like two months of hard work would come to blossom oh my gosh and so it really has and I was having a moment in the audience where I was like Chani was right girl so um so I'm really excited to be here so I specifically work with black women who are running for office and I like to say at the intersection of electoral politics and racial justice because I don't just work with any black woman or any black people I work with people who want to change the conditions of black people in their city and want to make sure that not only we stay alive but that we lead really meaningful lives because our families deserve it so most of the men I work with are in places that I call uprising cities so that have an incredible activist base that can serve as a like catalyzing force for that person and specifically non-traditional candidates to be elected I'm working in six mayoral races right now and all of those places are places where there have been an uprising of people who are invested in having leadership that really loves them and part of the way that I wanted to answer this question because a lot of people ask me about a lot of electoral politics kind of in itself feels very respectable and so I feel like the context that you've provided for us in this space I really want to answer that about that respectability because my women are trapped in it so when black women run for office we are not only at the intersection of race gender in class but then we're asking them to tell other people to choose them and so in an environment in which white upper middle class college educated men are the standards and so what's happening and and most progressive organizations are very guilty of this is asking them to become that version of white male political power I mean literally we'll have conversations with black women candidates and say cut your hair you can't have yellow nail polish the way that you say this isn't like change the way that you speak right like those are literal conversations that are happening so that's happening behind the scenes and so you can resist that as much as you want and then though you have to be on the campaign trail so the way the media writes about you is black single mother runs for United States Senate not engineer not civil rights attorney not two-term sitting congresswoman but the fact that she's unmarried and raised a child on her own is actually the leading thing I've actually never once worked for a black woman I worked in 43 states 43 states who wasn't in some way talked about in the media in a way that was had asked her to be more respectable and never once worked with a black woman who in the media wasn't called angry doesn't work well with others I worked on a mayor's race in st. Louis for Tashara Jones you may have been following and who's incredible and really I mean the whole race was colored by the fact that the st. Louis post dispatch would not stop calling her mean if the whole race was colored by the fact that literally they printed that she didn't hug people long enough and so I feel like oh yes yes yes yes and so I do I also want to answer that some of the races that I hope that you will continue to follow though the only way that we change this is that we become the story teller that's the only way I mean I've thought about it a lot like right the only thing that people who create a respectability narrative around us understand is winning and and when we break through it and tell our own stories and so which is why it's so important that you're in this world as well and so I want you to know that safety Abrams is running for governor Georgia and she would be the first black woman governor in this entire country and that's not and I want to be clear that's not an accident I want to be clear that that's not an accident the way that we we move up a process of elected leadership is we get stuck because of this narrative these narratives we have we have a responsibility to lift her outside of the way that people see power in this country that means that we have to talk about her we have to tell her story we have to talk about her in the framework that we understand and in language that our people can feel connected to because she's not going to get a fair shake y'all just because you're excited about her someone on your timeline is doesn't mean that she's going to get a fair shake and so we have to be very vigilant about the way that we allow women who we want to serve us to be stuck in the backing of respectability so what are you seeing right now when it comes to investing in black women's leadership and where are you seeing people get it and where are they not getting it okay well it's amazing that you led with seeing because I just want to start by saying because while we're sitting there sobbing in the front row I was thinking to myself like I feel so seen right now like in this space right in this dialogue these conversations this experiences so thank you for for that well I will say I work in technology and it who's who's doing it right it's smallest it's lonely they say it's one of the top but and it's a couple things like I'm what I'm serving in my industry right now is that there is a tension and right now we all want to say that you know and and and say that we're we're an industry that's about doing the most good but no one is actually talking about doing less harm and when we talk about disruption in the innovation lexicon we're not actually talking about the violence that comes with that and the lives that we're upending with that and that the fact that it actually doesn't have and the people who I see who are approaching technology holistically that are centering the lives of people who are products and services are you are they're using our black women entrepreneurs and so those are the ones that are getting it right but those are also the ones that are the least resourced in our space and they have been creating a way out of no way since the beginning of time and I think what we're seeing now in in the space with the fact that the markets are tightening there's not as much capital as there used to be and people are going to have to be inventive and resourceful in a way where black women in the back of the room like we've been here for a minute welcome welcome and so this conversation about not just doing the most good but doing less harm is really beginning to become centered in how we're talking about building products and that is what I'm really excited about in the space because I truly believe that technology has a role in solving social justice is social justice issues the most pressing social justice issues of our time if we are willing to meet this moment right now the people who are stepping up to that challenge are the ones who are most directly impacted by injustices and by our rights being taken away and we can't ignore them because our numbers are only growing especially in this administration right now so in this context of being able to tell our stories technology is writing the next like our next chapter of history and so it is up to all of us to step up to that plate and be a part of not just content producers but product creators and so the people are doing it well are organizations like black girls code I mean they have really created a space that centers not just the experiences of black girls but also the fact that like all of us can be a part of creating inclusive solutions for the products that we use every single day and so all of this is that what I'm talking about the fact that women of color and black women are the least resource entrepreneurs but the ones that are producing the most results in the marketplace it's something that's finally getting talked about more and more in spaces as the people who are holding power in these rooms are finally staying and so me being in venture capital offices like my physical presence changes the conversation like they can't be as openly racist but it's this thing about our physical our physicality of being in the rooms like being in these rooms matter and I can't opt out and that conversation and then the other thread that I'm pulling in terms of respectability is the fact that the Harvard the glorized white guy who dropped out of Harvard like that doesn't translate if you're a black woman in tech and that is also something where like the pattern matching of a successful looking CEO yeah I speak five languages I I speak five languages I have three degrees and I'm still mistaken for caterers in these venture capitalist offices and it's one of those things where I will never get to wear the hoodie like I will never get to wear the hoodie but I'm in the room driving the conversation to drive resources to entrepreneurs that are really going to shape our future and that is what matters to me the most so yeah I'll take your microaggression I'll remember it time stamp it in the future serve it back to you later yeah because I'm playing in the long game and like one of the long games that I I'm excited about right now so in this in this space where we need to tell our next story is but like our timeline is only one iteration of these story telling vehicles and right now of one in space that's really exciting like then virtual reality artificial reality machine learning the fact that half the room probably has Pokemon go on your phone right now and like who's shaping those products because that is going to only be the beginning of like how we're telling our stories and I want women of color and black women specifically to be in the room be the be the engineers coding these solutions and so talking about one of the programs my company runs called immersive impact which is basically like embedding people of color into these like emerging technology fields and having these conversations in these rooms where you know they're delivering millions of dollars to Harvard dropout suit and hoodies and talking about how actually we can drive those same resources to women of color who are telling incredible like they're telling incredible stories on YouTube and be like wouldn't this be great as a 360 video experience and like I have to bridge that gap and be the translator and like walk them through that and so the list of people who are getting it right are very short but right now what I'm excited about is that it we only have it can only grow right so basically black women are getting black women are getting pretty usual so I have one more question for y'all before we open it up to y'all including apparently Twitter they're asking questions too so Brittany you talked about being tired we've all talked about like different ways in which like are the visibility that that the work we're doing requires is can be painful because it makes us targets right what are each of you doing to take care of yourselves because I know that the other black women who are here and this is why this is why I'm asking because I feel like yes there's a whole like self-care conversation but I want to know like what what actually brings you joy and renewal in your life like because you all are very uniquely positioned as black women leaders and the rest of us need to hear this yeah I mean about this a lot because I think that the self-care conversation has like like all things that we just start to abuse yes what are you doing for yourself care you know people will send me a text like I saw you're running and you know running on another plane you know what are you doing I'm like a manicure for me is not self-care and so I feel like when people ask like I think that that's a measurement of whether I'm okay or not actually deeply love my work I mean it actually is a little reason why I'm single and I struggle like I love I wake up in the morning all my own at 7 a.m. by I have some rules around when I can get started I have to I'm not have to eat breakfast before I can look at my email that's my rule by 7 15 I'm up I literally take an hour break and then I work till 2 a.m. and I I love it and that's not for everybody but it's for me it really is at least for a few more years and the things that fuel me though are like deep loving connections with my friends I have a best friend who is my person she's my person in the world she's my soulmate and she sees me and her seeing me truly seeing me and that I feel like visibility however we're defining that has brought that closer to me that she net she doesn't care about the extra stuff and I think that that's important I also do think that part of this like refueling piece as a leader if what we're asking for is like how to deepen this is for the first time ever a funder in a conversation ask me so I know people like they talk about your work they talk about how they can fund your work like how do I what do you need what your skill what what part of your skills that you need and I realize that even though I've been working on campaigns for like thirteen years I've never gotten management coaching and I'm expanding my firm and so she said can I fund your leadership coaching and so now I have executive leadership coaching that someone else is paying for and I've actually never said that publicly but like I that someone said to me okay I don't want to just give you money to do more work I want you to be around for a while and I want you to be a good manager and I want you to duplicate yourself and so that for me those both and really important yeah I think so part of that for me is when you were speaking about the sort of like toll on their lives and their families I thought you know about how important it is to like create joy but also like really remember and celebrate and like hold it I find that especially going like the weekend to weekend conference to playing to whatever that there's actually a lot of great magical moment in my life I I was at the Black Keep Project 100 National Convenience Conference last weekend and just doing the hustle with a big group of Black Black folks to Frankie Beverly and Maze was like literally I want to remember this feeling forever and like and it not just because it's a hustle and freaking Beverly Maze but like every the feeling the energy in their room was that everyone was having that same exact moment they're like I want to remember this forever and I think that it's easy to go from thing to thing and like oh that was a cool conference and all of them said then but or even just like the one-on-one conversation this week has been been doing a lot of work around some of the price that were the campaign called no justice no pride here in DC and there's been a lot of like mean things that have been said about me by white gay men it's okay it happens all the time but it's not okay it does have all the time I'm used to it because we can fight oh right I'll put you in the army I was I was having a couple of days where I was like kind of just stuck in the like hurt and anger and frustration of those conversations and then one of our the field organizers at work would get equal North Carolina sent me a screenshot of them practicing some of the recruitment tactics that we talked about and being really effective and I was like oh right so none of this shit excuse me matters this matters we can curse them here and okay great this is what matters and this is the stuff that I need to like fill myself up with and when those when I do get tired being really really intentional about like going to the places and the folks and the people that give me that idea and can I say one more thing also having people like Jessica and Sabrina and Brittany and Mia and so many other folks that I know are fighting just as hard and struggling just as much and when I see them I could be like girl and they're like girl and knowing that those folks are there and building those relationships just it's invaluable and I don't know how we can I don't know why that is a non-profit industrial complex but it is something that just has to be a part of how we do this social change work forever if we're going to be able to do it ourselves especially what my friend called it micro affirmation yes yeah like you know when you see someone in the hall you're like the nod or like when you come into a meeting you're like girl exactly I'm gonna answer my own question then I'm like oh so just just the thing you said a second ago about like um these white men saying hurtful things about you and like it's okay because you're used to it so we get that shit all the time and we have to get used to it because we can't fall down on the floor every time it happens but when we do that like you know it's these little like internal like slices to our so I had this experience um in Boston last week where I was part of this um panel of people of color and this white woman asked us some stuff and we answered her and she was like but but but and I said no and then in the hall I was talking to this brother this woman came up to me and said do you have a minute and I said no and she said because and I'm like when you ask me do I have a minute that's not I'm like she said because so then she proceeded to explain herself again and say you know I don't think you understood me and I said no I understood you I just disagreed with you and she said but I don't think and I was like no so and and as she was coming up this brother who I was talking to I said to him I said I need you to stay here and he rooted himself next to me we had our little interaction and I turned to him he said thank you for showing up with your truth and I started weeping weeping and then he just held me and I cried for like 30 seconds and he was saying over and over again my ear like thank you for showing up thank you for being beautiful thank you for being strong like over and I was and I realized after that like I basically just like released that whole experience so I wasn't walking around with that like resentment and that and it's the invisibility right it's the invis it's the like she was not seeing me but he totally saw me and and and reflected to me that he saw me so I didn't have that thing and I was like I just want to go around like looking for instances like a superhero where I just like see some fucked up shit happen with like black women and I just go and I'm like I'm like I'm gonna hug you do you need to cry and I can just tell you how awesome you are by the way she does that regularly I mean that was like why I wanted y'all to come here right so that that thing and I just part of what I what I what I I think is like we don't we don't stop when those things happen and because we can't there's often it's not safe to like feel whatever it is when we got to like go get on a plane or get on a phone call or whatever but I just think about like what it would mean if we if we had more moments where we could just release those things and then move on and like how much less we'd be carrying well it's not just like the visibility like with the visibility comes a vulnerability yes and she didn't just not see you she saw you but she didn't see you as a full human who deserves to be heard and respected and like like the bound and in it in it is if I could like zoom out and zoom in it's kind of goes into like women of color who are running for office right now when we are like the way I'm kind of like looking at the land of the era we're living in with 45 it's that this is an outcome that none of us expected we're gonna have to go about addressing it in a way that none of us have done before and yes they're all of these calls for people to to run for office but there is an increased cost when it's women of color and black women who are running for office that white men do not have to pay and are we ready like and not all of them are going they're going to run because we show up but they're not all going to win so on the other side of winning when they lose are we there are we going to be there with systems and structures and networks of support to lift them back up again and that is something I want like in terms of like my like activists like like I want to help our losers like I want to I want to because there is no way there's no reason why that shouldn't be the case when white men startups fail like they immediately kind of slide into cushy like entrepreneur and residence positions like that's not a real job um like and when you know like white dudes challenge and lose in primary challenges like they slide into positions that think tanks but like we don't have those networks of support for black women and women of color who are running for office and I want to like we need to talk later after this but like so that's the zoom out of like the vulnerability and the visibility the zooming in is like personally I've like realized that like I've already been through a lot in my life like this is kind of just reinforce the resilience I've built in and like affirm that like you can come out you know how to do hard things and you can come out the other side of us whatever the other side is going to look like um and I have said this repeatedly and I think I've even said it to you before is that is that in this time it it has been very educational to me and I've been like okay I'm gonna ruthlessly love and support the people who ruthlessly love and support me and I'm gonna be ruthlessly dismissive of everybody else like to the point of like trolling them I'm like you think I care I don't and so like that's been really clarifying for me it's like these are my people this is what matters this is the work that fills me up because I do I love what I get to do and I think I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of shaping the future and I don't ever want to take that for granted but I also want and deserve to be a full whole person and as well and so also like I just I also realized like I like hanging out with people who are too young to vote so I've been hanging out a lot with like children they're cool you know like I've been seeing my family a lot and like cooking and like going on really dope vacations and like doing it all for the insta and it's so great and I hate to say I'm like super happy like sorry if you guys are in the struggle but like I'm great but yeah so like joy like joy is my right it is not like something that I'm not gonna like for it yeah I don't think I haven't figured out as well um so I'll say that so I you know I typically tell people I have a therapist a pastor an acupuncturist uh an astrologer um a personal trainer like I have all of the things you know to sort of think about all of these different parts of my life um and I'm really intentional about you know getting massages and you know go and sit on the therapist sofa uh and all of those sorts of things and go into church and try to have a spiritual practice so that I don't kill people and you know things of that nature right um but I but I also have some challenges around the limits of self-care because I live alone I live thousands of miles away from my family I'm an only child like you know and so don't those are really hard kind of moments my superpower is that you know I find homegirls wherever I go and so I have a great kind of homegirl network um that's really really dope and that holds me down and so you know but sometimes when folks are like well self-care I'm like I'm literally on Monday I finished another book and submitted it and it'll be out next year so thank you but the thing about that is everyone is like oh because black girls are magic and it's like but when I said I was tired but that's what I meant like you know all of that extra work in demand because the thing is when you are really tight then people just keep on asking you to do stuff and so I have a no coach that I call because I have a problem telling people no so so I have a homegirl that I call and I'm like so I need to say no to this but I'm gonna say yes because I have a problem and she's like okay I'll write the email for you I'll write the text message for you and then she's like sends it to me and then I can send it or whatever or we can talk about it and she can help me to understand why I need to say no even though I feel compelled right to say yes and so helping getting people around you that can help you with your weaknesses um but look I think the thing the place that I'm in at 36 is the place of like okay so I have a really dope career and now what right and and how do I build the kind of family that I want and I keep telling folks that I don't feel like I have I know how to have an amazing career because I've trained my whole life for it right and when you're a working class black girl that's the first right to make it to get degrees to get out to do then you you get you figure out that piece of it but I don't know that I figured out the literacy around building relationships and building family um and so I feel like I'm stumbling and bumbling through that part of my life in this moment but but the commitment I've based myself is that as scary as it is that I'm showing up to that that's part of myself care so the thing that I know is that I don't want to come home to live with myself forever and I really like living with myself right but it's one thing to know that at 36 when your career is hot and pop and it's another thing when you're like 50 though and things are look different and you may want to partner and so I think black girls should prioritize also it's not the thing people tell us because we're magic but I think we should prioritize thinking as robustly about what kind of family and partnership and kinship networks we need so that's why I invested my girls I talk to them every day I have lots of homegirls I talk to most of them we have different threads we check in every day um they show up for me even when raggedy negroes are not showing up um and you know I mean because y'all know what it is and so you know so they show up and so I cultivate those relationships like because they are family um and then you know but I also just feel like we have to be honest in saying that it's that it's not all neat and pretty that yes I wrote a book yes I have another book coming out but there are other parts of my life that I haven't figured out because I invested all of my time and energy in becoming this person right the sort of public person in the writer and the thinker and now I have to figure out how to let somebody love me and how to show up and love somebody else right um and so I'm actively figuring that out and beat and and really screwing it up and calling my girls and being like but we said this and I don't know what it means and so please help me what does it mean like and what I do not like so that's also happening you know um and I you know so I want to be really I think it's important for us to be transparent the other thing that I think I will say to y'all that I'm sort of working out case in point yesterday I had a you know so I have this so look I'm part of Black Lives Matter I think that I'm a radical black feminist you know I was a Hillary Clinton supporter during the election I say that because it was because my radical young black folks who are a few years younger have all the problems with it so we've been having these skirmishes with each other whenever I say this stuff online right and so one of the challenges that I'm working through in this moment is feeling like even though I've written books and hundreds of articles online whenever we're in a moment where we're not just seeing polarized polarization on the right where people are doubling down and digging in we're also seeing it on the left and there's a way where the thing that I worry about with young people who are under 30 is that they throw those of us who are just slightly over 30 away it's like y'all aren't woke y'all are old and you don't know and it's and and and so what so yesterday my pastor called because I was having one of these interactions where people were dragging me I had a lot of youngsters being like you're just capable for the Clinton you just and I was like the Clint like the Clint who don't like black people like who's legacy of policy like you know and and it was hard because I was like but have you read my body of work and then I realized that the reason that I was so passionate about black women's bodies of work is because the people through Mary trucks to Rellaway because they thought that she was so respectable and snooty that there was nothing that she had to offer right and I was like there's a risk when we need people to meet every criteria that we have and we throw them away when they don't right um and so I've been dealing with the heart of that right it hurts my feelings right I think that's important to say because in a hyper digital moment I don't need folks to agree with me but I need people to know that I am flesh and blood and a human being and then I do this work because I actually love black people and I want to see us get free right and so this is my way to do it and that means I don't always get the thinking right but the love and the passion and the commitment is always there and so we got to figure out a way to have disagreements with each other about the about ideas about the ideas that will get us free without questioning people's commitment to the struggle right um and so and look that because that's a way that we can care for each other we might not be able to look because I know that the list of things that I listed that I do to care for myself are also reflective of the fact that I have a very good job and that everybody is not in a position economically to be able to do all of those things but one of the things we can do is show up and be empathetic and the thing that I said to people is during the election most of my girls didn't agree with me they were like no girl we just don't understand but they love me and they ride for me because their love for me is not predicated on political agreement yeah right and so we I was like so we figured out how to just have a conversation about where we were and understand we're like be you good like what do you need and when people step to me crazy them being like be you good or we need to roll like you know what I'm saying and so that's a way when we're talking about care not just as an individualist project but as a community project that what I would say to this group is please let us not throw each other away it's really important yes yes go that's all right good um it brought up so much for me and I love I love I loved it but um I was also just thinking too about you digging through archives right of these women and that people will like dig through our tweet to know us us as in all of us and how that adds to this idea of vulnerability public vulnerability and um and branding and I feel like it's what's really hard is that knowing that I'm going to change like I'm very clear that I change a lot you know like if I would I'm so glad that I wasn't much into Facebook when I was like 20 and like didn't have the language or the analysis and I also know that even in a year I'm going to have more than I have now and to think that I have to be married to some of the things that even I say or feel is really I feel a lot of anxiety around it and then I also want to say something connected but um not um not married is um I do think queerness so I identify as queer and I think that queerness has brought an expanded version of the way that I think about family and community that's such a gift um because I feel like there was a time when I would think about this marker of my life of 30 or 35 whatever and I would think very clearly about like these steps I feel like queerness has has just expanded and deepened everything about my life that says I actually don't need to live in binaries at all and that like actually at 30 could be my own renaissance or like could be or 40 could be or that I could always I think queerness for me says I can always change my mind um and that I get to be whatever I want to be and so um I feel like that you brought that up for me when I when you're thinking about community and what you think what you need and I think that when we think about a community of care it actually doesn't have to be an intimate partner um it really can be um people that you choose like you get to just choose who's who's in your life yeah the structures of like the binary structures of like family and like these are the people who take care of us and we didn't make that like that was that was the that's a construct and so we get to remake the like our world and our communities and what care is and what what love is so yeah these expansive ideas of family and I mean I know probably all y'all got to answer your uncle who is not related to your parents right I mean you know I'm also just like the violence of like the single family home and like the destruction that that actually ripped up single family homes actually ruined actual communities right there's this incredible talk I saw of um someone taking aerial photos of prison where there's one entrance in and one entrance out and then they juxtaposed it next over um McMansion neighborhoods where there's one entrance in and one entrance out and you and he's mixed them up and like tell me which was which and you could not tell like that that is not natural that is that is that is not that's not love um so yeah let's like rip it all down burn it all down and start a new I'm okay with that all right so we're gonna turn it to y'all and I'm gonna let you know right now I'm prioritizing the black women who have questions open because right now it's my house on loan on loan but it's mine right now yes first yeah we want to hear hi thank you first of all I just want you to know as an older auntie how beautiful it is to see you all up there and I took my time in saying that because you are a convergence of all different aspects of where we're trying to go in this new millennia and how we're trying to recreate our country with a multicultural aspect but I'm curious do you all look back at aunties like me and say come on do you have those experiences do you invite our knowledge or our experience because we may not have all the letters behind our names like you do so so I'm think I'm the oldest up here um I'm 44 I'm gonna let y'all answer that question I mean y'all bring me along so I feel like like sharing your lives and telling your stories like that informs how and shapes how I see the world like I'm an auntie to literally little kids but my like I you know being able to be a purview to sit on the shoulders of my grandmother and my my aunties like it is it has helped me like show up in the world as a better citizen as a better human it helped me do my job better I one of the proudest professional achievements I've had was you know I took my grandmother to go vote in her first democratic election ever she my family's from Somalia so she became a citizen in time to vote in 2012 for Barack Obama and I got to go and take her to the polls my grandma there's also 411 so she like fits in my pocket you know and I took her to the polls and I went to go translate for her and because she doesn't speak English she's not she's like whatever I'm a million years old I'm not learning English but I'm gonna vote for Barack Obama and so I had to go and translate for her and um and just very vulnerable she doesn't read or speak English and I show up at the polls and they're like cool you're gonna translate for her you have to sign this very legal document that says she's not paying you and you don't work with her and I was like wait a minute let me get this straight she doesn't speak or read English and you I'm gonna sign this and I'm gonna have her sign this document legal document in in English and they're like yeah and I was like that doesn't make any sense but she did it and she her signature was just an X and it brought me back to like the time when we had to do poll tests and stuff like that um we were leaving a bunch of people from our masks who were also rolled up and I was like yo do you guys hear about this weird thing you have to do and I translated for my grandmother but then I also stayed and I translated for other people from my master going through a couple months later I'm with a good friend of mine uh Samala who you know and I'm telling her this experience she is with the ED of an Asian American civil digital civil rights organization called 18 Million Rising she's like actually this is a massive problem like the UX of our democracy is broken and like this conversation rolled into like we speak a language that connects us to our older generation um they need access to civic services that are not in systems that are not designed for them how can we pair volunteer translators with people our aunties our grandmothers and like have this like dialogue at our kitchen tables that make them full participants in our democracy that conversation evolved into a product that's called voter box that got activated this last election cycle so like yes I'm here for all of that I'll say that um I think I'm in a place where I absolutely need more sort of aunties and I think it's I think both not just sort of where I am in my life but particularly around where I am in my trajectory as an organizer as a social change um activist like this question about you know hearing hearing a lot from um you know OGs or elders or even you know folks are sort of in between um about how they're sort of fighting the same fights that we are it's very disheartening for me and so I need to be in more community with folks who visit you know especially working in the lgbt community around like trying to push around race and class agendas like we've been having this conversation for about 25 years now I sure as hell can't have it for another 25 years and so being able to be connected to and rooted to more people more black women who have done been a part of this struggle in various ways and knowing how and why they stuck through and why they sustained it and having them articulate back to Barbara Ranze was at the BIP national convention last year or last weekend and she closed and she said um want to tell you why we love you and not just like we love you because you're black and you're brilliant but we love you because you're living this legacy you're doing like naming back to us what the progress is because we're out here in you know facebook like ah everything's awful and like having you know folks dictate that like actually yes awful and let's add some context let's add some layers um to to help you recognize that we are moving forward um and also modeling what it looks like to have this full expansive vision of being uh uh being a black woman and a scholar and the mother and all and all of the things it in between having that as a model is super super important for me now and I need more of it any answers on the aunties you know out here looking for news is out there yeah I mean and I my my answer is just so yes I mean all the candidates I work with are much older than I am um but also y'all know who runs civic engagement they run our churches they run every volunteer outreach so they definitely run the campaign office they're my boss and they make good mac and cheese and like that's my whole world yeah I listened for sure one is so my mom has three sisters and my dad had four sisters five actual aunties yeah who are just in my life who are just you know messing you know calling me up well you know I mean doing everything from being like well I don't understand how to post the thing on facebook so that you know and I'm like what is going on so yes I tell you know or but also so my you know so I think of my you know my growing up as being growing literally growing up in that sort of community of women that we talk about my single mama my grandma my auntie and what I love about the auntie my aunties and my grand my grandmother when she was living is that they're the people in my life who hold me accountable to having a full life so what they do you know so my you know my aunt called me she said I mean she called me like two months ago and said let me tell you about you know when I went to the club the other night and they started shooting she's 67 so I was like well what's happening you know what I mean she was like why shouldn't all when they had plastic clothes that it wasn't the right so I feel like what I love about that is that I have a really long generational view of what it means to be happy what it means to be intentional and all these ways my life can look and I cherish that um what I will say on the but I also hear the thing around like do you have people in your life who don't have all the letters and stuff but do you see them as valuable and yes and the reason why that's important to me to say is because I'm the only one of my family with all these letters right and so I'm still connected to those folks and they are the people who pray for me when white boys are like we don't know about your work and your this and your that you know my mama just called me and said baby you got this you smart as anybody in the room you can have it you can do it and I talked to the lord and it's gonna be done you know what I mean and every black girl means your version of whoever will do that for you and so I see people in my life who I know that when I am tired I can call them and they're like well they have been praying for you you know and you're gonna be all right and sometimes you just need the people who knew you before you were all of those things right and so yes I believe in that what the other thing I want to say though is and this is you know the place that I'm working through a 36 when I learned like in the last two three years that I'm old now whatever and I feel some type of way about it is like I don't like it when young folks in the movement who are not my actual nieces and nephews or my nieces and nephews be a friend who call me auntie I don't actually like that it feels ages to me I've had people do it and I don't appreciate it and so what I would like to be in that instance is a big sister and I don't know what happened to big sister them but I would hope that we could reclaim that that's amazing I love it meanwhile I'm like true you just don't know it um but I want to ask you about the classroom so we know all about kind of your public scholarship we know about writing your books um but someone in the academy I'd be interested in hearing you talk about how you're also managing showing up in the classroom I show up and teach two classes every semester I teach a full load at Rutgers um you know I teach a range of classes everything from I do a lot of work around gender and technology for Rutgers because of the current feminist blog so I teach in our gender and media minor I teach graduate seminars and feminist theory all of that uh and then I teach uh black intellectual thought all these all these different kinds of things um and the classroom is the reason that I became a professor I became a professor because I wanted to be a teacher it's one of the favorite parts of my job um you know I get to connect and look I see my classroom as a space of liberation I feel like when I walk into the room you know I'm not the kind of graduate instructor that is there to intimidate students and make them feel like they can't do the work I don't see my graduate seminars as a weeding out process so it means that I spend a lot of time in my seminars telling sisters in my seminars that they can do it and then when they come to my office and they cry and that happens a lot I sometimes just have to be the person that says you're smart enough you're good enough you have the skills to do this because academia is a really violent place um and one of the reasons that I'm so invested in claiming the mantle of black feminism is because it is the place where I learned the language that said to me that how black women live is theory we are living and thriving in the way that we think about what it means to creatively move through the world means we are always theorizers right that's Barbara Christian's work but also you know it was black feminist theorists who taught me like I will never forget the moment when I read Alice Walker's definition of womanism in a seminar and she started with the word womanish because my grandmother had called me that a million times and I didn't know that the stuff my grandmother said could become a theory of something and that was revolutionary to me first I gave it a side I took it because I was like this is what I don't know about you I don't know about this that's interesting because there's a way that we don't even concede that black women are authorities even black women don't do it right and so part of what I see my working the academy is doing you know I feel like I'm an interloper there I'm there to steal resources for our people right I'm there to help every black kid that I meet every kid of color that I meet because I work in New Jersey we have a large Latina Latina population right any kid of color that's in my class I look I teach everybody who comes through the door what I hope is to give white kids a transformative way to look at the world because I know that they will have a significant amount of power and what I hope that my students of color feel is heard and seen right and then I hope that and then you know and then when I'm in graduate seminars and I'm training black women what I'm trying to do is add people to the black girl mafia like that's all that I'm trying to do we need more people right and I want them to know that they can do it and that they're tight and it makes me really mad when they come and tell me that they sat in a seminar and people were talking about bullshit right and calling it theory and telling him it was relevant and I was like what people were doing was they were talking about the ways in which white men have understood the world and the reason that that feels violent and irrelevant to you is because they're trying to make something that is deeply particular universal right and so I'm just telling you that so that you know that your theoretical work is also deeply particular but it has universal implications because the real talk is that what my book shows the work that we're all doing shows is that how black women think about the world because it is so fundamentally democratic right it is so fundamentally a world that is about the inclusion of as many people as we can with as little harm as possible it's our shit that actually changes the world and I think we need to run everything just give it to us all right we can do it I had the page in the book that I wanted to read but then you got all deep and I was like oh I need to write this down um no it's a part in the book where you quoted at ebony magazine special issue on the problems of the negro woman I love the quote because I feel like it's very relevant um and the quote just says uh problems of the negro woman intellectual that was the title it began with this observation the negro woman intellectual is easily one of the most misunderstood underappreciated problem ridden of all god's creatures in fact if we if if it were left to many negro males alone to decide she would not even exist so with that the question that I have for you is with this with the whole idea of uh the politics of respectability being in academia how do you get to write about what you want to write about when you're already challenged like contested space in academia um I get some input from like oh after you get your phd write about what you want to write about after you get tenure then write about what you want to write about after you get full so how do you uh exist in that space be legitimate in that space and also create content that's consumable to a larger audience yeah yeah so so what I'm gonna say is not a easy answer but it is the answer I did double work so one I rejected the idea that I was gonna get radical after tenure I don't think that that's true I think that you if you're committed then you do it now but here's the thing and this is the hard part so we live in a moment where everyone is really um deeply obsessed with having a platform because you can have one out the click of a button um and so everyone is like well I need to write for the public and whatever and what I will say look I know the landscape has changed so grad students are not negotiating world that I wasn't negotiating from o3 to o9 um where I didn't feel the pressure to have a public platform before I got out of grad school we created the crunk feminist collective in 2010 so I was a professor junior professor and I didn't have tenure and so it was risky but I had a phd right um so I would say think about when the moment to go public because it does live with you forever um but I would also say be tight in your academic work the only reason that I could have a public career is because I was outperforming on the regular academic standards too so the thing that I knew about being on the tenure track is that they craft a narrative about you well you know it's such and such a distracted right because they're doing all of these public things so I was like cool when I submit this tenure file I'm gonna have an edited volume I'm gonna have this monograph I'm gonna have you know all of the I'm gonna have more articles than necessary one of those is award-winning lots of referee book chapters at Rutgers you need a book in three or four articles for tenure maybe I went up with a book four articles two special issues nine book chapters 200 public okay I'm also tired of shit but that's but that but literally but you know but that's the thing that it required because I didn't want them to have a narrative that I was distracted so I did more work so that I could create the space so the thing that you have to know and the other thing is folks are like oh but you know you got paid I got the salon gig three years into writing for Crunk so at Crunk I wrote a hundred you know pieces for free over those the course of those years that were past breaking pieces that really kind of built the sort of public conversation about black feminism that we wanted to have and that was free labor that was just about my commitment to people and we wanted people to be able to access it for free so um so I would say one I don't buy into the philosophy of waiting I do think you have to be strategic about the place where you are and so I was like figured out well here's how the place that I am work so here the standards I have to meet I have to exceed those standards and then I can do my shit and don't say shit to me about my shit if I'm doing your shit plus you know and that's how but the last thing is like really really dig in and do the work and be tight so one of the reasons that people don't mess with me not not a lot they try it but and when they do I can dismiss them even like the folks on Twitter yesterday who were sort of stepping to me like I didn't have that body of work I was like quite a problem here is like y'all are actually wrong though and I know that because I've done my work and so the last thing I'll say the thing I've been telling people is it is as easy as ever to be public which is the work of like trying to be in community it is as hard and as slow as it ever was to be a good product so take your time do your shit right and there's going to be plenty of space for you to do this other thing black women have always done this black women have never understood scholarship as a private enterprise not ever we have always understood the work as something that we were doing for communities and that's part of the reason that it got devalued as not being intellectual enough um and so you're gonna so I when I see sisters I always noted for the most part they go and work in communities in one way or another the real question is you know is being strategic and thinking about things as chapters and realizing you don't have to do everything at the same moment because even though it may look like I did y'all just see me at the end but it's been you know it's been nearly 10 years you know and that's applicable to everything yes people ask me all the time like so I want to manage a campaign or I want I want to do what you're I want to create my own firm it's like okay well it's been literally hundreds of miles sleeping in my car you know being it's all the stuff right yes yeah all right so here's what's gonna happen we have time for one more question but then we're gonna like mingle and drink and get the book signed and stuff so we're gonna be around except for Jessica got a runoff to run shit go do a fundraiser for campaign um before that question though I just want to give a shout out to the family centered social policy program here at new america and my dear friend Rachel black who was a white girl who caped hard for black women and she is why we got to be here in this space so thank you all right see one more question I'm gonna go with you because you're right in my line of sight but that don't mean that the rest you can't ask your questions okay yes we can have two all right wait well same time ask your question then you're gonna ask your question we'll do both thank you see look at that democracy there we are look first thank you all so much for giving me some life today um you're just so hey um but I also I often struggle with the fact that when we talk about visibility and invisibility that so this country right this world right like it it survives on the mental physical and emotional labor of black women and it simultaneously disappears us right like I often think about the call for Michelle Obama to run for office and I'm like you haven't earned that you you just you have not earned that um and she you are not entitled to her labor so I want to know or I would like you to share um how is it you navigate that space right because I just I'm at the point now where I'm just like leave me alone you you cannot have for me that which I will no longer give you because I give you everything that I have when I have the capacity to do so so how do you how do you navigate that space of saying no you're not entitled to my mental physical and emotional labor without feeling compelled to give an explanation because I don't explain anymore it's just the flat out no and I keep it moving so my question is more from a policy standpoint in terms of how do we center black women and part of that conversation I work in a policy space amongst a lot of white faces um and I feel I'm deeply concerned about 2018 I'm also deeply concerned about 2020 because we have leaders who have convinced themselves that we have to center the policy conversation around working class white men or white families um believing that to center I believe if you center the conversation around black women as you said we're universal and it's inclusive you'll capture all and so I'm wondering especially as we're going forward in these conversations with the current president etc how do we ensure that this train is not just going to like veer off and we're never going to get back on track with this conversation of ensuring that voters of color feel supportive voters of color feel like the democratic party is behind them and that we are not just well y'all are always going to be with us because I mean what else are you going to do I'll I'll think of that question um I'm actually not I don't think I'm an expert on saying no so I'll I'll learn from you actually um but I think that for me and I can't necessarily speak from the policy but I do think sort of on this broader political spectrum um of where black women are being seen being prioritized being given uh leadership representation and I think that um what we're what we have to do is actually um well what I'm doing is being very anxious about holding of a line not as a purity test but more a line on the values what we're fighting for um actually need to be as progressive as radical as rooted in our needs as possible because they're going to they're already over here over here on the right all the way over here on the right right and not just not just um you know sort of the 45 or even the republicans or the moderate democrats I've heard a lot of less leaning progressive democrats sitting with that same sort of we need to sit in our working right class and it's just it literally has never ever ever ever worked in this country's history and I think that we have to be really uh this is a time for a lot of that you know sort of radical agitation direct disruption of the political system not actually work doing the work that like what Jessica is doing we cannot um wait for or continue to push for them to hear us and to center us we've got to do it ourselves and they're gonna they're they're going to keep going down this road and it's going to explode and be a trash fire um it'll be a shit show exactly and that's unfortunate but we can continue to push for that radical vision on the local level especially so that maybe in 2020 maybe in 2022 maybe in 2024 folks start to come around like okay well I mean I spoke to the like you just so we know each other so um you know I led a campaign over the 2016 election cycle called democracy in color and it essentially was a call to action to democratic party to to do this very thing is to speak directly to your base we actually have the numbers to win at the national level every time if we actually just talk to our own people and didn't give a shit about swing republican light voters um but we spend hundreds of millions of dollars talking to these folks who hate us um because they hate the very values that we fight for because we're aspiring to be inclusive um and so our formulas are off um and so for me it feels a couple things that we get to do one is they're never going to win without us and so I think that this even though um this administration is so violent and we're the first we're the first harmed right and we're in very imminent danger I will say that what I'm finding in my work is that it's there's a political renaissance happening that the innovation around speaking to voters the innovation around which candidates of color in particular and black women who I work with are even addressing campaigns is totally different we're winning races or we're being outspent literally 10 and 20 to one I mean organizations at the national level are completely mystified but we're winning races with $150,000 to $2 million in commercials that's because like we're we're single-handedly in some of those races changing the formulas at which races are won we have to keep doing that the only thing I think folks understand and in particular people who could center us is winning and so when we engage in some of these 2017 elections especially if we engage in 2018 I really believe that we will shift the ways in which people engage us and I mean what I'm doing is just building independent black political power like I just don't think we need an institution that we have to beg for shit anymore like that's just not a real thing for me that I will affirm and validate your feelings of fear you should be afraid for 2017 like these are these are real threats I will further say that how to go about centering black women's leadership is it requires restructuring power and that is a radical act um and the radical action at the end of the day comes down to resources and how we resource the resource our movements and how we resource our leadership and how we resource campaigns so for me as a technologist I look at this from a very not emotional data informed place and so I am afraid because I'm looking at the data and the data says do this and dummies are doing the opposite and those dummies are at the table and that's really scary what I think is the opportunity is the fact that like yeah they are in a dumpster fire they will drive us off the cliff while that's happening we need to be building because we need like they'll burn themselves down but we need to be building the alternative so that leap comes from Jessica's work comes from Angela's work comes from my work comes from Dr Cooper's work comes always from yeah like keeping us alive as we're doing it so what are we going to build what is it going to look like I know I know personally I'm looking at the like for so-called progressive resistance nonsense I'm seeing these resistance candidates and they are almost universally hiring the same white led political consulting firms that got us in this mess in the first place and so I'm kind of like wait a minute you're hiring the same shops that kind of no no that you are resistance profiteers you are not here when your business model when my freedom is your business model we are not coming at this problem from the same place and so we need a restructure power that's what it comes down to as to ask for your question I'm awesome at saying no I I love it like I'm kind of like I dare you to ask me to do something so here's the thing like like you people have to like you I mean this is the thing I've been I want I've been informed because like I have my father like infused in me knowing my work and then I got I'm great at what I do and so I get recognized for that and so like people I respect in my field or like come on our private jet and tell me what to do and I'm like yeah okay billionaire I'll get on your private so like when like that happens and then some zeros come at me and they're like can you come like I will say I will say exactly the latest no email thread um three weeks it's like come to this thing in San Francisco in three weeks give us two days of free work help us reimagine the free open web I want you to guess who's like who's who who asked me to do it and I was like first of all three weeks like I'm a busy person already busy in three weeks second of all I just wrote back like what is the compensation for this labor and they're like no compensation and I was like first of all and I just like broke it I was like one like one of the values like all of the sponsoring organizations have like open web transparency like our shared values and I'm like these are shared values transparently you should say this is free work we're asking you to do like on last minute notice like BTW like help us reimagine open web like and if and if you and then these are the constraints then I'm gonna say the outcomes of that meeting is not gonna lead to a very open web because it's gonna limit the people who can drop everything drive like fly across the country at the last minute and be in that room and I'm telling you I'm not paying that I'm not paying that cost to my family at the last minute I'm gonna have to get them to cover me to pick up this and like my business that I have to keep going while I'm on this like nonsense two-day workshop that benefits you and not me and so I said we had this like absurd email change and where he was he kept being like oh he thought the error was not telling me up front it was it was like gonna be zero dollars and I'm no no I'm telling you the error was it being zero dollars in another email thread I'm literally emailing with a billionaire who's like I'm like I called him on a Saturday and I was like I do a lot of humanitarian tech stuff and so a lot of services are gonna go off get disappeared because of 45 so we're trying to get lineup private donors to fill the gap and so I called him on a Saturday and I was like any 50 million for this specific refugee project don't know Friday I need this and then Saturday I saw he tweeted something dumb and I called him I was like that was dumb left a voicemail and then I'm sending an email it's like only you would um ask me for 50 million on a Friday like 40 and 24 hours later call me a dummy and he's like by the way I that was absurd why did I I shouldn't have said that I was like yeah because I'm right yeah so not everybody has infused in them Sabrina's ability to say no and and to and to know our worth right black women are told every day that we're shit I have this theory which Brittany has heard a little bit of I think I've refined it some so white entitlement white fragility white women's tears in particular so there's this parasite that infects rat brains and I know it's an analogy to work and it it makes them sexually aroused by cats and they throw them I know y'all looking at me like I'm crazy but it's going somewhere so they they basically they throw themselves at cats and they they meet their demise and I believe that what when we are faced with white fragility white entitlement white women's tears we often feel compelled to explain to apologize to not value ourselves I know that's a weird analogy y'all but I feel like right white white fragility and entitlement is kind of like the rat brain parasite and we need to learn to inoculate ourselves against that thing because we I mean I feel I have faced white women's tears and I have to sit there and go don't say it don't apologize don't make her feel better don't comfort her just let her cry and and you and like so and we just have to do that work there's no like not all of us get to be like you are exceptional in that way yes but it but it is the it's the but there's a physical discomfort that we sometimes feel to not try to comfort the other person to not prioritize white people's emotions and feelings in front of our own I know right wait but we should explain I actually feel like that's not my struggle actually is with black folks like I really I get asked to do a lot of work for free I get asked to a lot of talks a lot of coaching for free and part of it is because we have so much need we have so much need and it's so under resource like again all our political climate and black political representation is not an accident our path is locked in a lot of ways but I really struggle to say like I'm one human I'm not magic I know it seems like I'm doing a lot I am doing a lot it is four it is 14 hour days if you want me to spend a half hour with you if you want me to travel to your coffee you're asking me to take away from getting a mayor elected you're asking me to take away from writing a proposal you're asking me to write and it's not that I don't love you and I think that's what I struggle with the know is like I really love black women so deeply I wish I could spend all day giving free advice and I just can't it's like actually it's like physically and literally in my life I can't and so I struggle I really struggle and I'll find myself on the phone and I'm trying to multitask and I'm melting and I get off the phone and I'm like you did that thing again because you wanted it and now you're exhausted and you're crying because you like got a paper cut and really it's not about the paper cut it's because you're just fucking exhausted because I'm empty and I kind of I've hit I think I've been emptied and I've just been like I'm never going back to that again and holding that line and getting my needs net and prioritizing what I need for the yes has meant that I like I don't want to feel like I've had cried over paper cuts before and I'm like it's a paper cut I know like everything is hard let me let me so I just want to affirm that like that you have the right to you and the thing is but it's just like when black women have to do the work around knowing that we're pretty and knowing that we're worthy sometimes you just have to stand in the mirror every morning and say it like you know that I have the right to my know right that my knows are yes to myself yes right um and and saying that until that becomes truth for you um the thing I want to say about white people in centering white working-class folks is um so I don't know a lot about how to do it in policy but I think that sometimes it's really useful to understand I mean I think black people understand white people far more than they would ever know that we know um I mean we have to it's a matter of survival but I also but there's a psychology with white people where so so the person to help me with this is Anna Julia Cooper I write about in my book and in her book in 1892 she has this whole allegory where she talks about how we reconstruction for black folks was really a situation in which that she says look the civil war was basically that that white people in the north you know she called them the big brother and the white people in the south were the little sister that basically little sister had got out of control and was just acting up and wouldn't do right and was ruining everything the family had built and so basically they had to discipline little sister and then that reconstruction was well we're tired of fighting and so we're ready to get back together again and so now you know we're you know let's let's stop fighting like everything will be well so what do you need us to do so we can stop fighting um and so I'd like to think about that family analogy sometimes because when I watch white people just pivoting liberal white folks right just pivoting back and you know Bernie Sanders being like oh because you know white working class voters aren't racist or sexist and it's like do you know the definition of racism and sexism because if you did like I mean I don't understand you know what I mean what are you talking about and so but it's because there's a psychology that what white people thought the civil war for is they wanted the union not because they had a solidarity with black people right this is the thing we know and so white people have a psychology around they really do see these white workers they empathize with them they know them they're families with them and they want to be connected to them they can't throw so it's interesting right because they are struggling to throw their people away it's the one place where even though white people love to think of themselves as individuals even white liberal people are doing white identity politics in that moment right it's not just the right that's doing it it's liberal folks too because they really identify with these people um and so I so what I would say to white people that's very provocative it's going to make you uncomfortable I'm going to say it one of the things white people really need to think about in this moment is that the only thing that has ever caused your people to change around race and class is the civil war and what was the civil war the civil war was a war in which white people had to kill other white people to get them to treat black people well with that wow don't do me that way yes I am that's exactly where we need to end all into school food and some drinks