Tressie McMillan Cottom

“Sean Combs was the original influencer. Now the artist and mogul is defining his next era—and launching a record label.”

“Only a society that willfully believes itself ‘post-racist’ could produce such a queen.”

“And yet, for academics this is a constant tension. They have this idea that the writing should be secondary, or distinct, from the thinking. And I’ve always found that very bizarre. How are you thinking, if you are not writing?”

Have you read Tressie McMillan Cottom’s book “Thick” yet? If not, that’s a mistake, but a mistake you can begin to rectify by reading this excellent, wide-ranging interview to understand just how sharp a thinker she is.

The only thing better than an interview with writer, scholar, and Twitter luminary Tressie McMillan Cottom is an interview with McMillan Cottom where the interviewer is Roxane Gay.

“It might seem that the culture’s perennial strong woman would also be competent. But incompetent and superhero do not actually conflict in the context of essential notions about gender, race, class, and hierarchy.”

A response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “My President Was Black” from sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom: “My first black president seems to think he can have black cool without black burden. For all his intimacies with his white mother and white grandparents, my first black president doesn’t appear to know his whites.”