Bell Hooks Loving Blackness As Political Resistance Analysis

“The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in the American society.” US Representative, John Lewis said this in his return to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial he spoke on 54 years ago, during the March on Washington. Racism has been around since the beginning of time, but it is not human nature. Racism is something that is taught, and given the amount of time that has passed since To Kill A Mockingbird and the March on Washington, one would think that racism wouldn’t be a serious issue any more. Although race relations have improved along with other social issues from the time of To Kill Mockingbird, racism and discrimination are major problems in today’s society.

Hooks writes that today she would be considered a well-paid member of the “Professional-managerial class” she rarely thinks of herself in relations to that class. She explains how she was taught at an early age, by her grandparents and parents, to assume that

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

Sitting on the porch with her sisters, hooks saw that “next to the white drivers in the front would be the dog and in the back seat the black worker.” This subtle image taught hooks the “interconnectedness of race and class,” and a demeaning message that white people placed animals ahead of African-Americans. Taking the high road, hooks attempted to spark conversation with her white neighbors; however, she was turned down and ridiculed. While trying to be friendly, hooks was told that “they came to this side of town to be rid of lazy blacks.” Time and time again racial and sexist tensions worked against Hooks, but instead of letting injustice get the best of her she made her porch a place of “antiracist resistance.” Hooks’ porch was an oasis in the male/white desert that dried up her life. On hooks’ porch she could experience the peace and joy she had as a child sitting on her porch with her sisters before her father came home. Hooks could have talked back to the white people that mocked her, but instead she chose the high road and conquered race with peace.

In the new proactive book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander dives into the not so complicated racial issues that plague this country that we tend to ignore. In all of history, African Americans have had to constantly fight for their freedoms and the right to be considered a human being in this society. It’s very troubling looking back and seeing where we have failed people in this country. At the turn of the century, when people began to think that we had left our old ways behind, this book reminds us that we are wrong. Racism is still alive today in every way, just in different forms.

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coates). This powerful quote exemplifies the mistreatment of blacks in America as something that has been prevalent throughout our nation’s history and is still present in our contemporary world. Our national founding document promised that “All men are created equal”. As a nation we have never achieved the goal of equality largely because of the institution of slavery and its continuing repercussions on American society.

bell hooks, renowned black feminist and cultural critic criticizes the lack of racial awareness in her essay, Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination (1992). ‘bell hooks’ is written in lower case to convey that the substance of her work reigns more important than the writer. From a marginalized perspective, hooks argues that sites of dominance, not otherness is problematic and critiques the lack of attention that white scholars pay to the representation of whiteness in the black imagination. Critical feminist scholars Peggy McIntosh and Ruth Frankenberg identify their own whiteness as a dominant discourse, but share a critical departure from hooks with the notion of whiteness as terror. hooks aim is not to reverse racism, but discuss her position to authentically inform readers about how she experiences racism. Furthermore, systems of oppression are manufactured by human thought and thus the site of the Other is always produced as a site of difference. Gender, race, sex, class, disability, and geography are situated differently in social structure, but dominant groups assume they share the same reality though they cannot experience it. In consequence, the Other cannot hold a singularized identity of their own and the binary structure succeeds in containing racialized bodies in place. What happens to those bodies when they cross boundaries of the binary? hooks recounts being routinely disciplined back into place when crossing the border; however, dominant white

In this chapter, bell hooks describes her experience with class privilege in college. Her race and socioeconomic status made her stick out from her classmates, which made her a target for their stares and torments. Her financial situation also made it hard for her to get into a college that she felt comfortable at. Hooks’ struggles ultimately made college hard for her, and left her feeling bitter and troubled about her achievements.

“Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination” written by American author, feminist and social activist, bell hooks, dissects the dichotomy of black and white culture in a westernized society. Hooks utilizes the term ‘whiteness’ throughout her piece as an acknowledgment of the domination, imperialism, colonialism, and racism that white people have asserted among black people. This discipline progressively has evolved from history; through slavery and forth, leaving an imprint in

As echoed in Bell Hooks’s We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, the culprit to the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement is masculine patriarchy which, in turn, reinforces racism and oppression. The general public fails to recognize that BLM stemmed from oppression to black males, not the black community as a whole. Furthermore, even though this movement is intended to fight anti-Black racism, it is focusing on the empowerment of black women.

Throughout hooks’ article, she introduces the idea behind binaries between black and white and our minds unconscious dependence on them. Hooks discusses how society is taught to automatically associate the term black with bad things and white with good things without hesitation. This indirectly deceives blacks into affiliating themselves with negative terms and ideas, leading to unconscious self-hate. Hooks states, “ Though systems of domination, imperialism, colonialism and racism actively coerce black folks to internalize negative perceptions of blackness, to be self-hating, and

Hooks model does not achieve the full potential and she ends up reaffirming the traditional model that she strongly disagrees

In Yearning, hooks discussed the politics of feminist theory and cultural production through a collection of twenty essays on various stories on race and gender. Hooks theorize cultural criticism has operated in black life as promoting critical opposition, and allowing black people to practice critique. Yearning analyzed everyday blackness that would deconstruct those cultural productions designed to serve the interest in white domination. “Within the context of an apartheid social structure where practically every aspect of black life was determined by the efforts of those in power to main white supremacy” (3). bell hooks argues there are not enough studies to which racial integration changed black response to the cultural industry and cultural

bell hooks is successful in delivering her message in article “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” because she gives examples of herself as well as examples of other students who she has known. She argues that lower class students were ignored by their teachers and peers. Although, few sentences and paragraphs in her article are not as effective as the whole article, still reading it is interesting. In her essay, hooks defends poor people who have been ignored by white people at school. She also explains her situation when she was studying. She defends poor people, which is what most of the good writers are doing in order to let their readers know that they are not thinking about getting money or anything like that. hooks is an effective writer through the use of persuasive examples and emotional appeals.

When hooks’s father physically abused her mother she realized how alone women can be despite of having a family. hooks’s uncle came and she describes the event in third person by saying, “She cannot bear his silent agreement that the man is right, that he has done what men are able to do. She cannot take the bits and pieces of her mother’s heart and put them together again” (150). hooks did not know what happened that made her father so angry, however, she expected her uncle to be supportive. As a child she and many others grew up understanding that women were not expected to make mistakes and that a man was not to be question by anyone. The most impressive part is that not only hooks has encountered these events in life because many of us grew up or will grow up experiencing similar