Tressie McMillan Cottom

Cottom in 2019

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an American writer, sociologist, and professor.

Quotes

• The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped in that space of hyper-visibility, I think, is where we wrestle with the ideas of, 'What part of me matters?'
  • On the concept of being hyper-visible in “In 'Thick,' Tressie McMillan Cottom Looks At Beauty, Power And Black Womanhood In America” in WBUR (2019 Jan 21)

• The farther away you move from our dominant assumptions about who should have expertise, generally speaking, the more you have to prove that you have a legitimate claim to whatever you're speaking on. For black women that means we're dealing with racist ideas and stereotypes about who's knowledge is valuable, but we're also dealing with gender stereotypes about who should be allowed to speak and to lead…
  • On the professional difficulties faced by Black women in “In 'Thick,' Tressie McMillan Cottom Looks At Beauty, Power And Black Womanhood In America” in WBUR (2019 Jan 21)

• I want to be able to show up and raise the hell at the precise right moment that might tip the scales in a way that will make something a little more clear, or a little bit more just, for people I care about…
  • On what her writing goals are in “Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom: Raising Really Good Hell for People Who Cannot” in Guernica Magazine (2019 Mar 20)

• We don’t even have the power to build a bubble, right? That’s the ultimate story of being who we are and writing about ourselves. We don’t even have the authority to create that bubble.
  • On people of color not having the freedom to live sheltered lives in “Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom: Raising Really Good Hell for People Who Cannot” in Guernica Magazine (2019 Mar 20)

• One of the things I like to say to people is that we think that broadening access in any realm — we do this with everything, by the way. It’s such an American way to approach the world. We think that broadening access will broaden access on the terms of the people who have benefited from it being narrowed, which is just so counterintuitive. Broadening access doesn’t mean that everybody has the experience that I, privileged person, had in the discourse. Broadening it means that we are all equally uncomfortable, right? That’s actually what pluralism and plurality is. It isn’t that everybody is going to come in and have the same comforts that privilege and exclusion had extended to a small group of people. It’s that now everybody sits at the table, and nobody knows the exact right thing to say about the other people.
  • On inclusivity and wider conversations in "Ezra Klein Interviews Tressie McMillan Cottom" on The Ezra Klein Show (2021 Apr 13)