Controversial Rutgers University Professor Dr. Brittney Cooper is once again making news over her bold views. During an interview about critical race theory (CRT) with writer Michael Harriot of the online magazine The Root, she called for “honest conversations.”

“White people are committed to being villains,” Cooper said. “We gotta take these motherfuckers out.”

Cooper, a professor in the Rutgers Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department, appeared on a September YouTube interview with Harriot to discuss CRT and recent attempts to oppose it being taught in elementary and high schools.

Critical race theory examines how racial bias is fundamentally embedded in the fabric of America and has shaped policy and society. This is generally taught in colleges and universities.

When asked what would be needed for whites to relinquish control in the U.S., Cooper said bluntly, “The thing I want to say to you is that we gotta take these motherfuckers out, but like, we can’t say that, right?”

She continued, “I don’t believe in a project of violence. I truly don’t. Because in the end, I think our souls suffer from that. And I do think some of this is a spiritual condition.”

Cooper added, “White people thought, ‘There is a world here, and we own it.’” 

In addition to being a Rutgers University associate professor, Cooper is an author, activist, and cultural critic. Her areas of research and work include Black women organizations, Black women intellectuals, and hip-hop feminism.

Cooper is co-editor of “The Crunk Feminist Collection” — essays on intersectionality, African American culture, patriarchy, misogyny, anti-Blackness and hip-hop feminism. Her other books include “Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women” and “Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower.”

She is no stranger to controversy. In 2020, she blamed Donald Trump for obesity in Black women due to the lack of access to good healthcare and good health insurance under his administration. She also called Black men who are working with MAGA against the Democrats “rogue.”

During her interview with Harriot, Cooper discussed the idea that the opposition to critical race theory is based on white fear.

“So they think Black people gonna get them back. And I wouldn’t be mad at the Black people who want to get them back,” Cooper said, “But what I believe about Black people is that we have seen what a shit show this iteration of treatment of other human beings means and that my hope is that we would do it differently in the moments when we have some power.”

Whites believe “either you dominate or you are dominated,” Cooper said.

Cooper and Harriot discussed the way whites look at power and power-sharing. “The world didn’t start when white people arrived in America and tried to tell all the rest of us how things are going to go,” she said. “There were people out here making worlds – Africans and indigenous people being brilliant, and libraries, and inventions, and vibrant notions of humanity, and cross-cultural exchange long before white people showed up being raggedy and violent and terrible and trying to take everything from everybody.”

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