Love Quote by Anna Julia Cooper

Bullies love the theater of dominance, but Cooper snaps the spotlight onto the backstage: fear. Calling them "cowards at heart" isn’t a motivational poster jab; it’s a diagnosis of how power actually behaves when it’s insecure. The phrase turns the usual moral framing inside out. Bullying isn’t strength gone wrong, it’s weakness looking for a costume.

Then she adds the colder insight: "a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey". That animal verb, "scenting", strips bullying of its excuses about temper or misunderstanding. It’s predatory and selective. Bullies don’t swing at randomness; they test for vulnerability, isolation, and low likelihood of consequences. "Pretty safe instinct" is the knife twist: Cooper implies that social systems routinely make this hunt low-risk. The predator thrives because the environment lets it.

As an educator and Black feminist thinker working through Reconstruction’s aftermath, Jim Crow’s rise, and the respectability politics imposed on Black advancement, Cooper would have recognized bullying not just as playground behavior but as a social technology. Institutions often dress intimidation up as "discipline", "tradition", or "order". Her subtext points at the complicity around the bully: the bystanders, the administrators, the norms that mark certain people as acceptable targets.

The intent is tactical as much as moral. If bullying is cowardice plus opportunism, the antidote isn’t pleading for kindness; it’s changing the risk calculus. Protect the vulnerable, close ranks, enforce consequences, and the bully’s "instinct" suddenly fails.