This Black Poet Just Revealed What’s Really Missing When You Leave Intersectionality Out of Feminism

In response to Patty Smith’s “Rock N Roll N*gger,” in response to #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and in response to my white activist feminist poet friend who let slip from her mouth a humorous exclamation of “nigga, please.” They said I could be a feminist, too. After all, they are going to need someone at the meeting who knows how to tighten up all those white girl dreadlocks. Oh, yes.

They said I could be a feminist. That is, of course, as long as I don’t ask any questions, try not to mention the troubling tongues of old icons, or how proudly mother deities suffered themselves, black and dirty, blue and bruised, so they could use one of the really good words. Words made for the megaphone mouths of punk rock stars, words like n*gger. Like everything that’s yours is going to be mine for the using. Like, didn’t you know what we were doing here? Like, go on. Give them your story. You’ll see how it shines like fresh blood for the cameras.

There are going to be a lot of cameras, and they said I could help. Must be good for something. Must be some big toothed benefactor that would just eat me up. Articulate black girl, such as myself, just the right amount of mad. They didn’t mean it like that. No need to get upset. We’re all in this together. All right, then. Put me on the front lines. Give me your blackest, most brackish kind of weather. This thick skin is just waiting to be good for something.

Yes, please. Give me a nice big sign that reads “me too” or maybe “me too,” if that sounds better. You know, they said I could be a feminist, as long as I don’t talk about this black girl body, about that cold red body of water, about an inheritance so great that no one body could apologize it away. As long as I don’t remind anyone where so many of the ideas for this movement came from, anyway. No one likes a know-it-all, and yes, even in this progress, someone has got to play the fuel. All of us have to make ourselves useful, and surely no one has yet forgotten how sweetly, or how happily, dark bodies take to making kindling. They said I could help. They said I could be the best kind of help.