Tiffany raised her hand, and our professor asked, what did she have to contribute?
“I have a question. What does Jessie Fauset have to do with anything? She quit The Crisis, and we never heard from her again. The end—”
I tried to interject: “No, Tiffany, she published two more novels—”
“And when have white women ever looked out for us? I mean, I love my soror, Dr. Oludara, and everything, but I respectfully disagree that feminism is for us.”
She smiled at our professor, who looked down at her dress and pulled off a piece of lint. The old man had told me that Dr. Oludara had pledged Beta back in her sophomore year at Routledge, but the next year, when she made the decision to stop pressing her hair, the chapter president had told her she needed to stop participating in sorority functions, because her nappy hair was an embarrassment.
Tiffany began pulling back fingers. “During slavery, they wouldn’t keep their men from raping us. Then slavery was over and white men started lynching brothers. Then there’s Frances Willard saying it’s okay to kill Black men. She’s one of your feminists, Ailey, isn’t she? And then they didn’t even want Ida B. Wells-Barnett walking in the 1913 march.” She sat back in her chair, as if the case were closed.
“But Mrs. Wells-Barnett joined that suffragette march anyway,” I said. “Even when they told her she couldn’t, she was, like, no, y’all can’t stop me. And other Black women marched, too. So feminism must have been important to them.”
Tiffany rolled her eyes.
Abdul raised his hand again. “I don’t get you, Ailey. Are you one of these lesbians—”
“What does that have to do with anything—” I raised my voice to gain purchase, but he began shouting.
“Naw, naw, let me say this! Women are supposed to be at home, not out on these streets! Y’all sisters need to understand your place—”
“Dr. Oludara, can’t I talk?” I asked.
Our professor smiled, a brown Mona Lisa. “I’m not going to get in the middle, Sister Garfield. You know I like a free-flowing discourse, no matter how lively it is. But Brother Wilson, ‘place’ is an offensive term when talking about the roles of Black women. Further, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a lesbian, either, and your implication otherwise is offensive as well. We are in the latter part of the twentieth century. Try again, please.”
“Look, Doc, no offense. But I don’t understand why our women”—at this, several sisters erupted into yelling, but Abdul kept going, again, raising his voice to a shout—“Yes, our women! Y’all belong to us! And I don’t know why y’all females need this feminism or womanism or whatever. It’s unnecessary if you got a good brother paying bills and taking care of business.”
Tiffany agreed with him, but other sisters threw “sexist” in his direction, until our professor raised her hand for quiet. “Sisters, please. Brother Wilson has the floor. As obnoxious and sexist as he is, please try to be respectful of his incredibly outmoded, offensive views.”
There was laughter, but Abdul refused to acknowledge that he was the butt of the joke. “Like I was saying, y’all women wouldn’t need feminism if you weren’t lonely and mad. I ought to know. My daddy left us, and my mama stayed pissed.”
I raised my hand. “So because I’m supposedly lonely, I’m angry?”
“Are you going to deny you’re lonely?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He exchanged a knowing glance with Steve. “You answered my question, right there.”
“I wasn’t finished! You’re saying if I had a man, I could be happy in a patriarchal, sexist context, but it’s clear you don’t want to acknowledge my marginalized, intersectional identity as a woman of the African diaspora!” I was very proud of my usage of all the new vocabulary words I’d discovered in Dr. Oludara’s handouts.
Abdul pointed his finger, Public Enemy–style. “See now, I didn’t say all that. What I said is, you wouldn’t be angry if you had somebody to make some good love to you—”
At that, Dr. Oludara raised an objecting finger, but I cut in.
“If I’m so mad and lonely, what’s your excuse? It’s ten sisters to every brother on this campus, which means you’ve got plenty somebodies to choose from. And yet you still got that funky attitude.”
Other women clapped, urging me to tell it like it was. Pat covered his mouth, but I could tell he was laughing.