Repeatedly people have said to me in their own way, from within their own stratified statuses, that I need to believe I am beautiful or can become be… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

If you think that I am intelligent and ambitious and reasoned and formidable, if you think one good thing about me at all, then I insist that you reconcile that with me just being regular black-black.

When the privilege to read and to think comes great responsibility. When you have that privilege precisely because so many others like you — black women — are systematically filtered out of every level of social status, then the responsibility is especially great.

Smart is only a construct of correspondence, between one’s abilities, one’s environment, and one’s moment in history.