Brittney Cooper () on the origins of #BlackLivesMatter as a social media movement and how it formed a resistance to shifting how mainstream media reported on violence against Black Americans. #MakingBlackAmericaPBS
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Brittney Cooper
@ProfessorCrunk
Professor. Contributor Books: Beyond Respectability| Eloquent Rage| The Crunk Feminist Collection| Feminist AF| Stand Up! (Aug. 2)
Joined January 2012
Brittney Cooper’s Tweets
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Gonna talk about this on my IG Live now for the next little bit.
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Random: *some* grad students on social media are hella bold w their future senior colleagues in ways my cohort of academics just never would be. It’s def interesting, and *noted for the record.* <back to grading>
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Sometime later tonight, let’s say around 7:30 or 8p CST, once I am home, I’ll hop on my IG to say something about today’s Twitter threads. Because I’m tired of going back and forth, and sometimes folks willfully misread you and don’t want to hear you.
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It’s amazing that folks want to name call you here (which I distinguish from legit critiques of work) and then expect your future good will when they do so. Who raised y’all? Also do y’all expect this of folks other than Black women professors? Or just us?
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So much fun watching reasonably intelligent people confuse respectfulness with respectability.
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Oh and I’m not turning on replies because I don’t want to. But I see the bullshit. I definitely see it. You want me to see it right. I see it. And I’m happy to retweet examples of bad behavior and deliberate willful misreading of the point. More than happy to.
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Are you threatening grad students with job insecurity for critiques? Isn’t that part of academia?
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Random: *some* grad students on social media are hella bold w their future senior colleagues in ways my cohort of academics just never would be. It’s def interesting, and *noted for the record.* <back to grading>
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Can you even dance bitch? Talmbout some professor Crunk 😭 you Black elitist academic snobs are trash.
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Random: *some* grad students on social media are hella bold w their future senior colleagues in ways my cohort of academics just never would be. It’s def interesting, and *noted for the record.* <back to grading>
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That's why everybody hates you and you're too chickenshıt to turn on replies lmao
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Random: *some* grad students on social media are hella bold w their future senior colleagues in ways my cohort of academics just never would be. It’s def interesting, and *noted for the record.* <back to grading>
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I’m done.
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Ground, which btw, does not require you to disrespect or deliberately misread us, in order to make space for yourself. We could talk about how deliberately misreading and disrespecting Black academics as a mode of performing radicalism ain’t where it’s at. But let’s just not.
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Which again is just evidence that folks ain’t reading. But claiming to be credible as critics. It’s easier to just lie and say the rest of us are in league with elitist structures than to see the disruptions and divestments we have performed/engaged as steady ground for building.
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And also: folks be claiming they hate academe, but steady applying to the most prestigious grad programs and jobs, while claiming they hate it here. Lol. While acting like they the first set of academics to critique the violence of the university.
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So you can choose to read me as someone who might know something about what I’m talking about or you can read me as a big bad scary prof attacking y’all for no reason. That’s up to you. But I thought I’d share today so I am.
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Which is to say: I have vehemently and vocally disagreed with profs and public figures with more power than me on a few occasions. But it was always about their arguments or their behavior, not baseless attacks on their character. Or just meanness masquerading as critique.
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And rather than reading this as being some divergence from the same person who went hard in public in print against a tenured prof, as a jr prof, because he *actually* threatened a friends career, perhaps read this *in that context.*
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And since I had time today, I’m telling you. It’s advice, unsolicited, but advice nonetheless.
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And that disrespect isn’t always rooted in a rigorous critique because again (folks ain’t read my work lol just my tweets) but rather performing on here for clout. It’s not a good look.
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So I don’t actually clap back at grad students, but I am noting the way that this choice actually emboldens straight up raggedy behavior and disrespect from some folks.
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Last thing: the reason professors don’t clap back at grad students here or elsewhere is precisely because it would be a case of bullying or picking on folks with less power in the academic structure.
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Folks name-checking my book but ain’t read it. Clearly. (Any of my books for that matter.) That’s part of the problem. Anyway, you can ask my actual grad students how I treat my students. And for the record, just like y’all ain’t scared, I’m not either. That is all.
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Random: *some* grad students on social media are hella bold w their future senior colleagues in ways my cohort of academics just never would be. It’s def interesting, and *noted for the record.* <back to grading>
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I'm not affiliated with the project, so I don't have details, but Rutgers and Yale are hiring librarians and project managers for something called the Black Bibliographies Project and salaries start at ~$80k. Apply, apply!
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And this is my response to those who think the thread below means I am not sufficiently radical: twitter.com/professorcrunk
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I hate bothsideism in US politics and I say that as a radical Black feminist/member of the progressive left who is highly pragmatic in the voting booth. One side wants to take us back into white supremacy and fascism and the other side governs at least half decently.
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Y’all enjoy your day. Let’s treat each other better. Let’s have more integrity in terms of what this all actually takes. Peace.
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So I respect those who resolve this differently. But I don’t respect the way we cannabilize each other on the left in the name of political purity. I give money and feet to movements. I give my expertise to training students to be radically minded. And I vote liberal to left.
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I think how I think because of the working class folks who raised me (grands and great grands were domestics and farmers, mom a secretary.) They got up everyday and built toward a future most of em aren’t here to see. They navigated terrible options to do so. They kept going.
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Nor am I compelled by those who think the only way to get to a better future, a a radically reimagined one, is by letting everything go to shit.
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I am watching the empire crumble. It always was going to do that. But I am watching Black people die the most as it happens. And I’m not compelled by those who aren’t compelled by harm reduction on one hand.
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it doesn’t seem to ever occur to these folks, that maybe some of the reason folks can’t get down w radical movements is bc they view the way we tell the story as dishonest. Both sides ain’t great, but in a two party system, we pick. Now help us pick best till we can pick better.
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But also: I think I have earned the right to say this. We have a lot of academic folks, or smarty art leftist folks, who say they stand for the people, but who mislead the people with false equivalence bothsides arguments.
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I know this. But I guess I have learned how to assess my chances and figure out how to maneuver to better ones. If I have to pick between a knife fight and a gun fight, the choice is easy. (The analogy is not exact but this is Twitter.)
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The voting booth quite often is triage. But it isn’t like we don’t know that every single day this democracy stabs us, and attempts to bleed us dry. I am gonna be bold enough to say I think one side let’s the chopper spray (GOP). The other side is a knife at the back (Dems).
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I simply don’t concede to this disingenuous view from the radical left that voting for democrats means we don’t imagine that other worlds are possible. I know other worlds are possible, necessary. My teaching, advocacy, writing is in service of building that world.
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I believe that we can vote in ways and legislate in ways that reduce harm, that give people room to dream and to work for the world to be better. I believe this because it’s what I saw my elders and forebears do every day.
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I do not actually believe that the US empire can be saved. It was built on the backs of Indigenous folks and my ancestors. I do not believe it as a project can be redeemed fundamentally. But I do believe in being radically present on the way to the radical future.
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I could go on. I know some of you will. Here’s the thing though. I try to hold complexity and pragmatism alongside the sense of radical vision Black feminism + racial justice movements have taught me. You don’t have to agree. I’m just sharing how I make sense of these things.
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I know that US military defense spending on the “spread of democracy�? abroad has harmed far more brown folks than it has helped, which means it being used as a defense for Ukraine is dubious. I know this.
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I know that the gaslighting pro-cop rhetoric of those on the left only keeps us tethered to a policing system that often does more harm than good, in our communities. We need to radically reimagine public safety. My participation in BLM taught me.
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