PART III: BLACK FEMINISM

Illustration of Melissa Harris-Perry, by Alyssa Etoile.

In this three-part video from Democracy Now, Melissa Harris-Perry (née Lacewell) eats Gloria Steinem for breakfast! Melissa Harris-Perry gave me language for something that I hadn’t really named. There were some things that were annoying about a lot of white women, that I didn’t have the language to name: She named it. And what that naming does is allow love to exist. I can just name the behavior and why it’s there—why your experience would dictate that you think and feel that I should “just come to your meeting,” as though you and I have been in, and will always be in, solidarity! That’s definitely not how I grew up, nor how it felt.

I remember watching the Rihanna video that everybody freaked out about, and talking to my friend, who found the video problematic. I was like, “Hmm, I hear you, and I also think that we don’t have any representations of that.” I showed her this video, of Melissa Harris-Perry and Gloria Steinem, and at the end of the debate she was like, “Hmm, I feel differently!”