bell hooks
Black American university professor specializing in social criticism focused on groups distinguished by estabished differences in social power.
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Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.
The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.
"In classroom settings I have often listened to groups of students tell me that racism really no longer shapes the contours of our lives, that there is no such thing as racial difference, that "we are all just people." Then a few minutes later I give them an exercise. I ask if they were about to die and could choose to come back as a white male, a white female, a black female, or a black male, which identity would they choose. Each time I do this exercise, most individuals, irrespective of gender or race invariably choose whiteness, and most often male whiteness. Black females are the least chosen. When I ask students to explain their choice they proceed to do a sophisticated analysis of privilege based on race (with perspectives that take gender and class into consideration)." - From (2003) Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
"What nationalist educators often fail to recognize is that merely being taught by teachers who are black has not and will not solve the problem if the teachers have been socialized to internalize racist thinking." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.
The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
"The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female voices gain a hearing.
To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.
"The fierce willingness to repudiate domination in a holistic manner is the starting point for progressive cultural revolution." --From Women, Art, and Society: Fourth Edition (2007) by Whitney Chadwick (ISBN 0-500-20393-8)
"People with healthy self-esteem do not need to create pretend identities." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
…Another in a series where postmodern white culture looks at itself somewhat critically, revising here and there, then falling in love with itself all over again.
"A dangerous form of psychological splitting had to have taken place, and it continues to take place, in the psyches of many African Americans who can on one hand oppose racism, and then on the other hand passively absorb ways of thinking about beauty that are rooted in white supremacist thought." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
"When television screens had only rare images of black folks, black people were more critically vigilant about these representations. Even when blackness was represented 'positiviely,' as it was in early black television shows like Julia, which focused on the life of a black nurse, the beauty standard was a reflection of white supremacist aesthetics." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
"Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
"Indeed much of the literature written about black folks in the post-civil rights era emphasized the need for jobs. Material advancement was deemed the pressing agenda. Mental health concerns were not a high priority." - From (2003) Rock My Soul
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