Bell Hooks Quotes (112 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

p. 12.
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 13-14.
Context: Recent focus on the issue of racism has generated discourse but has had little impact on the behavior of white feminists towards black women. Often the white women who are busy publishing papers and books on "unlearning racism" remain patronizing and condescending when they relate to black women. This is not surprising given that frequently their discourse is aimed solely in the direction of a white audience and the focus solely on changing attitudes rather than addressing racism in a historical and political context. They make us the "objects" of their privileged discourse on race. As "objects," we remain unequals, inferiors. Even though they may be sincerely concerned about racism, their methodology suggests they are not yet free of the type of remain intact if they are to maintain their authoritative positions.
Context: Racist stereotypes of the strong, superhuman black woman are operative myths in the minds of many white women, allowing them to ignore the extent to which black women are likely to be victimized in this society and the role white women may play in the maintenance and perpetuation of that victimization.... By projecting onto black women a mythical power and strength, white women both promote a false image of themselves as powerless, passive victims and deflect attention away from their aggressiveness, their power, (however limited in a white supremacist, male-dominated state) their willingness to dominate and control others. These unacknowledged aspects of the social status of many white women prevent them from transcending racism and limit the scope of their understanding of women's overall social status in the United States. Privileged feminists have largely been unable to speak to, with, and for diverse groups of women because they either do not understand fully the inter-relatedness of sex, race, and focus on class and gender, they tend to dismiss race or they make a point of acknowledging that race is important and then proceed to offer an analysis in which race is not considered.

“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women…. they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”

Bell Hooks

“Not all women, in fact, very few, have had the good fortune to live and work among women and men actively involved in the feminist movement. Many of us live in circumstances and environments where we must engage in feminist strugle alone, with only occasional support and affirmation.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8. <br class="br">Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

“While I expected serious, rigorous evaluation of my work, I was totally unprepared for the hostility and contempt shown me by women whom I did not and do not see as enemies. Despite their responses I share with them an ongoing commitment to feminist struggle. To me this does not mean that we must approach feminism from the same perspective. It does mean we have a basis for communication, that our political commitments should lead us to talk and struggle together. Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation. Were it not for the overwhelmingly positive responses to the book from black women who felt it compelled them to either re-think or think for the first time about the impact of sexism on our lives and the importance of feminist movement, I might have become terribly disheartened and disillusioned. Thanks to them and many other women and men this book was not written in isolation. … Such encouragement renews my commitment to feminist politics and strengthens my conviction that the value of feminist writing must be determined not only by the way a work is received among feminist activists but by the extent to which it draws women and men who are outside feminist struggle inside.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Acknowledgments https://books.google.com/books?id=ClWvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT8. <br class="br">Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

“Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.”

Bell Hooks

(1984)

Bell Hooks: Trending quotes

“Being oppressed means the absence of choices”

Bell Hooks

Rock My Soul (2003)

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.”

Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks Quotes

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“Class struggle is inextricably bound to the struggle to end racism.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=L1WvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3. <br class="br">Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory <br class="br">Context: Friedan was a principal shaper of contemporary feminist thought. Significantly, the one-dimensional perspective on women's reality presented in her book became a marked feature of the contemporary feminist movement. Like Friedan before them, white women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women's reality is true to the lived experiences of women as a collective group. Nor are they aware of the extent to which their perspectives reflect race and class biases, although there has been a greater awareness of biases in recent years. of white supremacy; it is only by analyzing racism and its function in capitalist society that a thorough understanding of class relationships can emerge. Class struggle is inextricably bound to the struggle to end racism.

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Bell Hooks

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

Bell Hooks

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"… No woman has ever written enough.”

Bell Hooks

Source: remembered rapture: the writer at work

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“feminism is for everybody”

Bell Hooks

“Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”

Bell Hooks

“Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”

Bell Hooks

“If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

(1984)
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

“One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library..”

Bell Hooks

Source: Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem

“Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe — not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.”

Bell Hooks

“A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism

“I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

“I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.”

Bell Hooks

“as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves”

Bell Hooks

“Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition.”

Bell Hooks

“There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.”

Bell Hooks

“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”

Bell Hooks

“Patriarchy has no gender.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

“The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our ‘natural’ condition.”

Bell Hooks

“Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

“The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.”

Bell Hooks

“Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Talking About a Revolution: Interviews with Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Peter Kwong, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Urvashi Vaid, and Howard Zinn

“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power—not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”

Bell Hooks

Variant: Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.

“It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

“We often cause ourselves suffering by wanting only to live in a world of valleys, a world without struggle and difficulty, a world that is flat, plain, consistent.”

Bell Hooks

Source: Belonging: A Culture of Place

“Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions