Black feminist’s ‘educated hoe’ graduation cap goes viral

Apr 16, 2017

DeAnn, a black feminist who is graduating from Eastern Michigan University, posted a picture of her decorated graduation cap, and the internet is eating it up.

On one side of the cap is an image of a young black woman twerking as she holds her diploma high under the words “educated hoe.” On the other side is a stack of books, including one with the feminist hashtags #SayHerName and #YouOKSis.

The bottom left shows a “Feminist Manifesto” and quote from Audre Lorde: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”

— California graduation rates improve for black and Latino students —

In speaking to The Huffington Post, DeAnn explained that the purpose of her decorated cap was to show that women can be liberated and sexy as well as intelligent at the same time.

“We don’t have to choose between twerking at the club at a girls night with our friends and graduating with honors, we can do both. We can do whatever brings us joy when the world tries so hard to tell us that we aren’t worth it,” DeAnn said. “Sex workers, ‘ghetto’ girls, loud women, women who didn’t attend college, single mothers, teen mothers, strippers, and everything in between deserve liberation and protection. We are not a monolith and there is not only one right way to be a Black ‘Queen.’”

“Our worth does not rest in between our thighs and anybody who tries to tell us otherwise is completely wrong,” she added. “We are humans with emotions, dreams, failures, and pain, all of which is valid regardless of if we are fully clothed working in a Fortune 500 company or dancing to our favorite song at the club. We are important, we matter and we exist for our own enjoyment and not the approval of men or society.”