help nonsense that borders on the religious. They need me to believe beauty is both achievable and individual, because the alternative makes them vul… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

If my work is about anything it is about making plain precisely how prestige, money, and power structure our so-called democratic institutions so that most of us will always fail.

White women need me to believe I can earn beauty, because when I want what I cannot have, what they have becomes all the more valuable.

The assumption of black women’s incompetence — we cannot know ourselves, express ourselves in a way that the context will render legible, or that prompts people with power to respond to us as agentic beings — supersedes even the most powerful status cultures in all of neoliberal capitalism: wealth and fame. In 2017 Serena Williams gave birth to her daughter. She celebrated with an interview, as is the ritual custom of celebrity cultures. In the interview, Serena describes how she had to bring to bear the full force of her authority as a global superstar to convince a nurse that she needed a treatment. The treatment likely saved Serena’s life. Many black women are not so lucky.