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I Began Writing A Book On Love Because I Felt That The United States Is Moving Away From Love.

-Bell Hooks

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I Began Writing A

Bell Hooks

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I Began Writing A Book On Love Because I Felt That The United States Is Moving Away From Love.

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True Resistance Begins With People Confronting Pain... And Wanting To Do Something To Change It.

What's So Amazing About This Historical Moment Is That It Is Bringing Class To The Fore And We Have To Think About The Nature Of Work And Hierarchy.

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.

Intersectionality Allow Us To Focus On What Is Most Important At A Given Point In Time.

Often Girls Feel Deeply Cared About As Small Children But Then Find As We Develop Willpower And Independent Thought That The World Stops Affirming Us, That We Are Seen As Unlovable.

I Was Teasing My Brother That He Was Penniless, Homeless, Jobless. Right Now In His Life, Racism Isn't The Central Highlighting Force: It's The World Of Work And Economics. It Doesn't Mean That He Isn't Influenced By Racism, But When He Wakes Up In The Morning The Thing That's Driving His World Is Really Issues Of Class, Economics And Power As They Articulate Themselves.

Anarchists Have Always Gone Against The Grain, And That's Been A Place Of Hope.

I Think I Was Always Obsessed With Esthetics.

The Function Of Art Is To Do More Than Tell It Like It Is-it’s To Imagine What Is Possible.

The Greatest Movement For Social Justice Our Country Has Ever Known Is The Civil Rights Movement And It Was Totally Rooted In A Love Ethic.

This Fear Of Maleness That They Inspire Estranges Men From Every Female In Their Lives To Greater Or Lesser Degrees, And Men Feel The Loss. Ultimately, One Of The Emotional Costs Of Allegiance To Patriarchy Is To Be Seen As Unworthy Of Trust. If Women And Girls In Patriarchal Culture Are Taught To See Every Male, Including The Males With Whom We Are Intimate, As Potential Rapists And Murderers, Then We Cannot Offer Them Our Trust, And Without Trust There Is No Love.

I Would Also Say That, In Practice, Many More Americans Are Anarchists Than Would Ever Use That Term.

Knowledge Rooted In Experience Shapes What We Value And As A Consequence How We Know What We Know As Well As How We Use What We Know.

The One Person Who Will Never Leave Us, Whom We Will Never Lose, Is Ourself. Learning To Love Our Female Selves Is Where Our Search For Love Must Begin.

Searching For Love

Whenever Domination Is Present, Love Is Lacking.

Right Now, For Many Americans, Class Is Being Foregrounded Like Never Before Because Of The Economic Situation. It Doesn't Mean That Race Doesn't Matter, Or Gender Doesn't Matter, But It Means That Right Now In Many People's Lives, In The Lives Of My Own Family Members, People Are Losing Jobs, Insurance.

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.

I Believe That This Nation Can Only Heal From The Wounds Of Racism If We All Begin To Love Blackness. And By That I Don't Mean That We Love Only That Which Is Best Within Us, But That We're Also Able To Love That Which Is Faltering, Which Is Wounded, Which Is Contradictory, Incomplete.

Is It More Important That You, As A White Male, Read My Work And Learn From It, Or What You Call Me? I Think It's More Important That You Read My Work, Reflect On It, And Allow It To Transform Your Life And Your Thinking In Some Way.

Like Many White Liberals, Ken Sees The Whiteness Of His Social Life As More An Accident Of Circumstance Than A Choice. He Would Welcome Greater Diversity In The Neighbourhood. However, He Does Not Consciously Do Enough Work Either In His Social Life Or In The Larger Community To Make That Diversity Possible.

The Practice Of Love Is The Most Powerful Antidote To The Politics Of Domination.

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?

All My Life I Have Longed To Have A Loving Relationship That Would Last A Lifetime.

Loving Relationships

Only Love Can Heal The Wounds Of The Past. However, The Intensity Of Our Woundedness Often Leads To A Closing Of The Heart, Making It Impossible For Us To Give Or Receive The Love That Is Given To Us.

When We Only Name The Problem, When We State Complaint Without A Constructive Focus Or Resolution, We Take Hope Away. In This Way Critique Can Become Merely An Expression Of Profound Cynicism, Which Then Works To Sustain Dominator Culture.

Individual Heterosexual Women Came To The Movement From Relationships Where Men Were Cruel, Unkind, Violent, Unfaithful. Many Of These Men Were Radical Thinkers Who Participated In Movements For Social Justice, Speaking Out On Behalf Of The Workers, The Poor, Speaking Out On Behalf Of Racial Justice. However When It Came To The Issue Of Gender They Were As Sexist As Their Conservative Cohorts.

When We Concentrate On Photography, We Make It Possible To See The Walls Of Photographs In Black Homes As A Critical Intervention, A Disruption Of White Control Over Black Images.

Relationships Are Treated Like Dixie Cups. They Are The Same. They Are Disposable. If It Does Not Work, Drop It, Throw It Away, Get Another. Committed Bonds (including Marriage) Cannot Last When This Is The Prevailing Logic. Most Of Us Are Unclear About What To Do To Protect And Strengthen Caring Bonds When Our Self-centered Needs Are Not Being Met.

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.

The Moment We Choose To Love We Begin To Move Towards Freedom.

Feminist Effort To End Patriarchal Domination Should Be Of Primary Concern Precisely Because It Insists On The Eradication Of Exploitation And Oppression In The Family Context And In All Other Intimate Relationships. It Is That Political Movement Which Most Radically Addresses The Person – The Personal – Citing The Need For The Transformation Of Self, Of Relationships, So That We Might Be Better Able To Act In A Revolutionary Manner, Challenging And Resisting Domination, Transforming The World Outside The Self.

Intimate Relationships

I Entered The Classroom With The Conviction That It Was Crucial For Me And Every Other Student To Be An Active Participant, Not A Passive Consumer...education As The Practice Of Freedom.... Education That Connects The Will To Know With The Will To Become. Learning Is A Place Where Paradise Can Be Created.

The Process Begins With The Individual Woman’s Acceptance That American Women, Without Exception, Are Socialized To Be Racist, Classist And Sexist, In Varying Degrees, And That Labeling Ourselves Feminists Does Not Change The Fact That We Must Consciously Work To Rid Ourselves Of The Legacy Of Negative Socialization.

The Intellectual Tradition Of The West Is Very Individualistic. It's Not Community-based. The Intellectual Is Often Thought Of As A Person Who Is Alone And Cut Off From The World. So I Have Had To Practice Being Willing To Leave The Space Of My Study To Be In Community, To Work In Community, And To Be Changed By Community.

We Have To Constantly Critique Imperialist White Supremacist Patriarchal Culture Because It Is Normalized By Mass Media And Rendered Unproblematic.

There Is Light In Darkness, You Just Have To Find It.

Patriarchy, Like Any System Of Domination (for Example, Racism), Relies On Socializing Everyone To Believe That In All Human Relations There Is An Inferior And A Superior Party, One Person Is Strong, The Other Weak, And That It Is Therefore Natural For The Powerful To Rule Over The Powerless. To Those Who Support Patriarchal Thinking, Maintaining Power And Control Is Acceptable By Whatever Means.

You Must Have Courage To Love, You Have To Have A Profound Will To Do What Is Right To Love, And It Does Not Come Easy.

Only Grown-ups Think That The Things Children Say Come Out Of Nowhere. We Know They Come From The Deepest Parts Of Ourselves.

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

Think Of All The Women You Know Who Will Not Allow Themselves To Be Seen Without Makeup. I Often Wonder How They Feel About Themselves At Night When They Are Climbing Into Bed With Intimate Partners. Are They Overwhelmed With Secret Shame That Someone Sees Them As They Really Are? Or Do They Sleep With Rage That Who They Really Are Can Be Celebrated Or Cared For Only In Secret?

A Distinction Must Be Made Between That Writing Which Enables Us To Hold On To Life Even As We Are Clinging To Old Hurts And Wounds And That Writing Which Offers To Us A Space Where We Are Able To Confront Reality In Such A Way That We Live More Fully. Such Writing Is Not An Anchor That We Mistakenly Cling To So As Not To Drown. It Is Writing That Truly Rescues, That Enables Us To Reach The Shore, To Recover.

Wars Make People Rich - And They Make A Lot Of People Poor, And They Take A Lot Of People's Lives Away From Them.

I Feel Sad That We Have Allowed These Knee-jerk Feminists Who Want To Act Like It's A Struggle Against Men...but Again That's The Least Politically Developed Strand Of Feminism.

My Work Is Mostly Influenced By The Concrete Circumstances Of Our Daily Lives.

As Long As Women Are Using Class Or Race Power To Dominate Other Women, Feminist Sisterhood Cannot Be Fully Realized.

We Have To Look At The Substance Of Something Rather Than The Shadow.

... We Need To Interrogate "reverence," For Idolization Can Be Another Way One Is Objectified And Not Really Taken Seriously.

Yearning Is The Word That Best Describes A Common Psychological State Shared By Many Of Us, Cutting Across Boundaries Of Race, Class, Gender, And Sexual Practice.

We Don't Hear Much From Revolutionary Feminists Who Are White Because They're Not Serving The Bourgeois Agenda Of The Status Quo.

My Students Tell Me, We Don't Want To Love! We're Tired Of Being Loving! And I Say To Them, If You're Tired Of Being Loving, Then You Haven't Really Been Loving, Because When You Are Loving You Have More Strength.

I'm Such A Girl For The Living Room. I Really Like To Stay In My Nest And Not Move. I Travel In My Mind, And That That's A Rigorous State Of Journeying For Me. My Body Isn't That Interested In Moving From Place To Place.

If Anything I Think Postmodernism Has The Least Impact On My Work.

Being Oppressed Means The Absence Of Choices

Remember, Care Is A Dimension Of Love, But Simply Giving Care Does Not Mean We Are Loving.

War In Its Essence Is Another Form Of Capitalism. Wars Make People Rich - And They Make A Lot Of People Poor, And They Take A Lot Of People's Lives Away From Them. So Much Of The War That Is Happening Is The Attempt Of One Group To Snatch The Resources Of Another Group.

Sexism Has Always Been A Political Stance Mediating Social Domination, Enabling White Men And Black Men To Share A Common Sensibility About Sex Roles And The Importance Of Male Domination.

We Fear That Evaluating Our Needs And Then Carefully Choosing Partners Will Reveal That There Is No One For Us To Love. Most Of Us Prefer To Have A Partner Who Is Lacking Than No Partner At All. What Becomes Apparent Is That We May Be More Interested In Finding A Partner Than In Knowing Love.

I Will Not Have My Life Narrowed Down. I Will Not Bow Down To Somebody Else's Whim Or To Someone Else's Ignorance.

They Wanted Black Women To Conform To The Gender Norms Set By White Society. They Wanted To Be Recognized As 'men,' As Patriarchs, By Other Men, Including White Men. Yet They Could Not Assume This Position If Black Women Were Not Willing To Conform To Prevailing Sexist Gender Norms. Many Black Women Who Has Endured White-supremacist Patriarchal Domination During Slavery Did Not Want To Be Dominated By Black Men After Manumission.

Since We Live In A Society That Promotes Faddism And Temporary Superficial Adaptation Of Different Values, We Are Easily Convinced That Changes Have Occurred In Arenas Where There Has Been Little Or No Change.

In A Culture Of Domination, Preoccupation With Victimage Is Inevitable.

Love Is A Combination Of Care, Commitment, Knowledge, Responsibility, Respect And Trust.

Writing And Performing Should Deepen The Meaning Of Words, Should Illuminate, Transfix And Transform.

To Indoctrinate Boys Into The Rules Of Patriarchy, We Force Them To Feel Pain And To Deny Their Feelings.

There Will Be No Mass-based Feminist Movement As Long As Feminist Ideas Are Understood Only By A Well-educated Few.

All Too Often We Think Of Community In Terms Of Being With Folks Like Ourselves: The Same Class, Same Race, Same Ethnicity, Same Social Standing And The Like..i Think We Need To Be Wary: We Need To Work Against The Danger Of Evoking Something That We Don’t Challenge Ourselves To Actually Practice.

My Focus Has Always Been On The Work - That Work Being Critical Thinking And Writing. I Am Always Doing That. That's Where I Am, Wherever I Am. Critical Thinking And Writing As My Heartbeat.

America Is A Country That Would Rather Talk About Race Than Class.

Within The New Self-help Books For Women, Patriarachy And Male Domination Are Rarely Identified As Forces That Lead To The Oppression, Exploitation, And Domination Of Women. Instead, These Books Suggest That Individual Relationships Between Men And Women Can Be Changed Solely By Women Making The Right Choices.

Genuine Love Is Rarely An Emotional Space Where Needs Are Instantly Gratified. To Know Love We Have To Invest Time And Commitment...'dreaming That Love Will Save Us, Solve All Our Problems Or Provide A Steady State Of Bliss Or Security Only Keeps Us Stuck In Wishful Fantasy, Undermining The Real Power Of The Love -- Which Is To Transform Us.' Many People Want Love To Function Like A Drug, Giving Them An Immediate And Sustained High. They Want To Do Nothing, Just Passively Receive The Good Feeling.

Feminism As A Political Movement Has To Specifically Address The Needs Of Men In Their Struggle To Revolutionize Their Consciousness.

When Men And Women Punish Each Other For Truth Telling, We Reinforce The Notion That Lies Are Better.

Telling The Truth

To Live Fixated On The Future Is To Engage In Psychological Denial. It Is A Form Of Psychic Violence That Prepares Us To Accept The Violence Needed To Ensure The Maintenance Of Imperialist, Future-oriented Society.

For Black Folks, The Camera Provided A Means To Document A Reality That Could, If Necessary, Be Packed, Stored, Moved From Place To Place... [photography] Offered A Way To Contain Memories, To Overcome Loss, To Keep History.

I See Myself, In Terms Of The Question Of Capitalism, As I Would Support Democratic Socialism Over A Capitalist System, Because Any Approach... Or Participatory Economics, Which Is Another Great Model That People Like Michael Albert Are Putting Out There... Any System That Encourages Us To Think About Interdependency, And To Be Able To Use The World's Resources In A Wiser Way, For The Good Of The Whole, Would Be Better For The World Than Capitalism.

Democratic Socialism

To Begin By Always Thinking Of Love As An Action Rather Than A Feeling Is One Way In Which Anyone Using The Word In This Manner Automatically Assumes Accountability And Responsibility.

I Think Our Culture Doesn't Recognize Passion, Because Real Passion Has The Power To Disrupt Boundaries.

I Do Get A Little Pissed At People Who Write Me And Want Me To Do Things, And Spell My Name Wrong.

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

Writing And The Hope Of Writing Pulls Me Back From The Edges Of Despair. I Believe Insanity And Despair Are At Times One And The Same.

If We Want A Beloved Community, We Must Stand For Justice, Have Recognition For Difference Without Attaching Difference To Privilege.

Beloved Community

You Have To Trust That If You Are Calling My Name In A Way That Is Offensive To Me, I'm Going To Share It With You. But You Also Have To Know What Your Feelings Are Behind Calling Me "bell."

Feminism Is A Struggle To End Sexist Oppression. Therefore, It Is Necessarily A Struggle To Eradicate The Ideology Of Domination That Permeates Western Culture On Various Levels.

Western Culture

When We Choose To Love, We Choose To Move Against Fear, Against Alienation And Separation. The Choice To Love Is A Choice To Connect, To Find Ourselves In The Other.

Honesty And Openness Is Always The Foundation Of Insightful Dialogue.

In Patriarchal Culture Men Are Especially Inclined To See Love As Something They Should Receive Without Expending Effort. More Often Than Not They Do Not Want To Do The Work That Love Demands. When The Practice Of Love Invites Us To Enter A Place Of Potential Bliss That Is At The Same Time A Place Of Critical Awakening And Pain, Many Of Us Turn Our Backs On Love.

We Live In A World With Serious Class Complexes. It Is One Thing To Be A College Student With Loan Debts And Another Thing To Be Just Dirt Poor For Your Entire Life. The Challenge Is To Come Up With More Complex Understandings Of Where We Are, More Global Awareness Of What Connects Americans With What Is Happening With Suffering And Oppressed People All Around The World.

To The Extent That We Live In A Postmodern World And It Shapes The Concrete Circumstances Of Our Daily Lives, I Would Say Postmodernism Affects My Work Or Influences My Work.

All Too Often Women Believe It Is A Sign Of Commitment, An Expression Of Love, To Endure Unkindness Or Cruelty, To Forgive And Forget. In Actuality, When We Love Rightly We Know That The Healthy, Loving Response To Cruelty And Abuse Is Putting Ourselves Out Of Harm's Way.

I Don't Have Issues Around How I'm Identified.

I Think Part Of Western Metaphysical Dualism Is, We're Always Being Asked To Choose One Over The Other.

As More People Of Color Raise Our Consciousness And Refuse To Be Pitted Against One Another, The Forces Of Neo-colonial White Supremacist Domination Must Work Harder To Divide And Conquer.

Even When People Capitalize My Name, I Don't Freak Out, Even Though That Would Not Be My Choice.

There Is No Politically Neutral Art.

The Time Has Come To Tell The Truth. Again. There Is No Love Without Justice. Men And Women Who Cannot Be Just Deny Themselves And Everyone They Choose To Be Intimate With The Freedom To Know Mutual Love. If We Remain Unable To Imagine A World Where Love Can Be Recognized As A Unifying Principle That Can Lead Us To Seek And Use Power Wisely, Then We Will Remain Wedded To A Culture Of Domination That Requires Us To Choose Power Over Love.

The Struggle To End Sexist Oppression That Focuses On Destroying The Cultural Basis For Such Domination Strengthens Other Liberation Struggles. Individuals Who Fight For The Eradication Of Sexism Without Struggles To End Racism Or Classism Undermine Their Own Efforts. Individuals Who Fight For The Eradication Of Racism Or Classism While Supporting Sexist Oppression Are Helping To Maintain The Cultural Basis Of All Forms Of Group Oppression.

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.

Popular Escapist Fiction Enchants Adult Readers Without Challenging Them To Be Educated For Critical Consciousness.

Commitment To Truth Telling Lays The Groundwork For The Openness And Honesty That Is The Heartbeat Of Love.

While Privacy Strengthens All Our Bonds, Secrecy Weakens And Damages Connection. Lerner Points Out That We Do Not Usually "know The Emotional Costs Of Keeping A Secret" Until The Truth Is Disclosed. Usually, Secrecy Involves Lying. And Lying Is Always The Setting For Potential Betrayal And Violation Of Trust.

I Get So Tired Of People Acting Like, You Know, Black Men And Women Never Help Each Other, Never Support Each Other.

The Political Core Of Any Movement For Freedom In The Society Has To Have The Political Imperative To Protect Free Speech.

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

I Thought About How We Need To Make Children Feel That There Are Times In Their Lives When They Need To Be Alone And Quiet And To Be Able To Accept Their Aloneness.

Let's Face It, War In Its Essence Is Another Form Of Capitalism.

Privilege Is Not In And Of Itself Bad; What Matters Is What We Do With Privilege. I Want To Live In A World Where All Women Have Access To Education, And All Women Can Earn Phd’s, If They So Desire. Privilege Does Not Have To Be Negative, But We Have To Share Our Resources And Take Direction About How To Use Our Privilege In Ways That Empower Those Who Lack It.

I Think We Are Obsessed In The U.s. With The Personal, In Ways That Blind Us To More Important Issues Of Life. I Just Think If We Could Take All The Obsession With The Personal (inaudible), And Personal Judgment And Have People Be Concerned About The Environment, What A Different World We Would Live In.

When Angels Speak Of Love They Tell Us It Is Only By Loving That We Enter An Earthly Paradise. They Tell Us Paradise Is Our Home And Love Our True Destiny.

All Of Us In The Academy And In The Culture As A Whole Are Called To Renew Our Minds If We Are To Transform Educational Institutions-and Society-so That The Way We Live, Teach, And Work Can Reflect Our Joy In Cultural Diversity, Our Passion For Justice, And Our Love Of Freedom.

...move From Emphasis On Personal Lifestyle Issues Toward Creating Political Paradigms And Radical Models Of Social Change That Emphasize Collective As Well As Individual Change.

When We Are More Energized By The Practice Of Blaming Than We Are By Efforts To Create Transformation, We Not Only Cannot Find Relief From Suffering, We Are Creating The Conditions That Help Keep Us Stuck In The Status Quo

I Gather Together The Dreams, Fantasies, Experiences That Preoccupied Me As A Girl, That Stay With Me And Appear And Reappear In Different Shapes And Forms In All My Work. Without Telling Everything That Happened, They Document All That Remains Most Vivid.

Giving Generously In Romantic Relationships, And In All Other Bonds, Means Recognizing When The Other Person Needs Our Attention. Attention Is An Important Resource.

Once You Do Away With The Idea Of People As Fixed, Static Entities, Then You See That People Can Change, And There Is Hope.

The World Would Be A Paradise Of Peace And Justice If Global Citizens Shared A Common Definition Of Love Which Would Guide Our Thoughts And Action.

Contrary To What Some Folks Would Have Us Believe, It Is Not Tragic, Even If Undesirable, For A Person To Leave A Liberal Arts Education Not Having Read Major Works From This Canon. Their Lives Are Not Ending. And The Exciting Dimension Of Knowledge Is That We Can Learn A Work Without Formally Studying It. If A Student Graduates Without Reading Shakespeare And Then Reads Or Studies This Work Later, It Does Not Delegitimize Whatever Formal Course Of Study That Was Completed.

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

Often Their Rage Erupts Because They Believe That All Ways Of Looking That Highlight Difference Subvert The Liberal Belief In A Universal Subjectivity (we Are All Just People) That They Think Will Make Racism Disappear. They Have A Deep Emotional Investment In The Myth Of Sameness Even As Their Actions Reflect The Primacy Of Whiteness As A Sign Informing Who They Are And How They Think.

The Fierce Willingness To Repudiate Domination In A Holistic Manner Is The Starting Point For Progressive Cultural Revolution.

If We Give Our Children Sound Self-love, They Will Be Able To Deal With Whatever Life Puts Before Them.

Some People Act As Though Art That Is For A Mass Audience Is Not Good Art, And I Think This Has Been A Very Negative Thing. I Know That I Have Wanted Very Much To Write Books That Are Accessible To The Widest Audience Possible.

Black Women Control The World. We Are Through Being Discriminated Against.

Life-transforming Ideas Have Always Come To Me Through Books.

In 2014, When Hillary Clinton Was Not Yet Running For President, I Stated That I Was Not In Agreement With Her Politics. More Recently, When Asked My Thoughts About Hillary Clinton During A Public Conversation With Gloria Steinem, I Stated, "she Embodies The Very Best Of Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy, But That Doesn't Mean That We Shouldn't Vote For Her."

Assumptions That Racism Is More Oppressive To Black Men Than Black Women, Then And Now ... Based On Acceptance Of Patriarchal Notions Of Masculinity.

All The Work I Do Is Built On A Foundation Of Loving-kindness. Love Illuminates Matters.

What Had Begun As A Movement To Free All Black People From Racist Oppression Became A Movement With Its Primary Goal The Establishment Of Black Male Patriarchy.

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.

Black Males Who Refuse Categorization Are Rare, For The Price Of Visibility In The Contemporary World Of White Supremacy Is That Black Identity Be Defined In Relation To The Stereotype Whether By Embodying It Or Seeking To Be Other Than It…negative Stereotypes About The Nature Of Black Masculinity Continue To Overdetermine The Identities Black Males Are Allowed To Fashion For Themselves.

Whether We're Talking About Race Or Gender Or Class, Popular Culture Is Where The Pedagogy Is, It's Where The Learning Is.

For Most People, What Is So Painful About Reading Is That You Read Something And You Don't Have Anybody To Share It With. In Part What The Book Club Opens Up Is That People Can Read A Book And Then Have Someone Else To Talk About It With. Then They See That A Book Can Lead To The Pleasure Of Conversation, That The Solitary Act Of Reading Can Actually Be A Part Of The Path To Communion And Community.

If Any Female Feels She Need Anything Beyond Herself To Legitimate And Validate Her Existence, She Is Already Giving Away Her Power To Be Self-defining, Her Agency.

My Idea Of A Delicious Time Is To Read A Book That Is Wonderful. But The Ruling Passion Of My Life Is Being A Seeker After Truth And The Divine.

I Think The Invitation Offered The Non-black Reader Is To Join Us In This Expression Of Our Familiarity And Via That Joining, Come To Understand That When Black People Come Together To Celebrate And Rejoice In Black Critical Thinking, We Do So Not To Exclude Or To Separate, But To Participate More Fully In World Community. However, We Must First Be Able To Dialogue With One Another, To Give One Another Subject-to-subject Recognition That Is An Act Of Resistance That Is Part Of The Decolonizing, Anti-racist Process.

Feminist Thinking Teaches Us All, Especially, How To Love Justice And Freedom In Ways That Foster And Affirm Life.

Given The Way Universities Work To Reinforce And Perpetuate The Status Quo, The Way Knowledge Is Offered As Commodity, Women's Studies Can Easily Become The Place Where Revolutionary Feminist Thought And Feminist Activism Are Submerged Or Made Secondary To The Goals Of Academic Careerism

We Don't Really Live In A Culture That Loves Boys Or Loves Children, And We Don't Encourage Boys To Be Whole.

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.

What We Cannot Imagine Cannot Come Into Being.

One Of The Most Subversive Institutions In The United States Is The Public Library.

When I Began To Think Deeply About The Metaphysics Of Love I Talked With Everyone Around Me About It. I Talked To Large Audiences And Even Had Wee One-on-one Conversations With Children About The Way They Think About Love. I Talked About Love In Every State, Everywhere I Traveled.

Death Is With You All The Time; You Get Deeper In It As You Move Towards It, But It's Not Unfamiliar To You. It's Always Been There, So What Becomes Unfamiliar To You When You Pass Away From The Moment Is Really Life.

If I Do Not Speak In A Language That Can Be Understood There Is Little Chance For A Dialogue.

Living Simply Makes Loving Simple.

Secrets Find A Way Out In Sleep . . . It Is The Place Where There Is No Pretense.

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.

Class Is Rarely Talked About In The United States; Nowhere Is There A More Intense Silence About The Reality Of Class Differences Than In Educational Settings.

The Wounded Heart Learns Self-love By First Overcoming Low Self-esteem.

..critically Intervene In A Way That Challenges And Changes.

Most Gay Men Are As Sexist In Their Thinking As Are Heterosexuals. Their Patriarchal Thinking Leads Them To Construct Paradigms Of Desirable Sexual Behaviour That Is Similar To That Of Patriarchal Straight Men.

If You're In A Domestic Situation Where The Man Is Violent, Patriarchy And Male Domination - Even Though You Understand It Intersectionally - You Focus, You Highlight That Dimension Of It, If That's What Is Needed To Change The Situation.

The True Teacher Is Within Us. A Good Teacher Is Someone Who Can Help You To Go Back And Touch The True Teacher Within, Because You Already Have The Insight Within You.

My Grief Was A Heavy, Despairing Sadness Caused By Parting From A Companion Of Many Years But, More Important, It Was A Despair Rooted In The Fear That Love Did Not Exist, Could Not Be Found. And Even If It Were Lurking Somewhere, I Might Never Know It In My Lifetime. It Had Become Hard For Me To Continue To Believe In Love's Promise When Everywhere I Turned The Enchantment Of Power Of The Terror Of Fear Overshadowed The Will To Love.

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.

In Our Young Minds Houses Belonged To Women Were Their Special Domain, Not As Property, But As Places Where All That Truly Mattered In Life Took Place - The Warmth And Comfort Of Shelter, The Feeding Of Our Bodies, The Nurturing Of Our Souls. There We Learned Dignity, Integrity Of Being; There We Learned To Have Faith. The Folks Who Made This Life Possible, Who Were Our Primary Guides And Teachers, Were Black Women.

Power Feminism Is Just Another Scam In Which Women Get To Play Patriarchs And Pretend That The Power We Seek And Gain Liberates Us.

The Fact Is That It Was Bourgeois White Feminism That I Was Reacting Against When I Stood In My First Women's Studies Classes And Said, "black Women Have Always Worked."

[o]ne Of The Most Vital Ways We Sustain Ourselves Is By Building Communities Of Resistance, Places Where We Know We Are Not Alone.

How Different Things Might Be If, Rather Than Saying "i Think I'm In Love," We Were Saying "i've Connected With Someone In A Way That Makes Me Think I'm On The Way To Knowing Love." Or If Instead Of Saying "i Am In Love" We Say "i Am Loving" Or "i Will Love." Our Patterns Around Romantic Love Are Unlikely To Change If We Do Not Change Our Language.

If We Are Ever To Construct A Feminist Movement That Is Not Based On The Premise That Men And Women Are Always At War With One Another, Then We Must Be Willing To Acknowledge The Appropriateness Of Complex Critical Responses To Writing By Men Even If It Is Sexist. Clearly Women Can Learn From Writers Whose Work Is Sexist, Even Be Inspired By It, Because Sexism May Be Simply One Dimension Of That Work. Concurrently Fiercely Critiquing The Sexism Does Not Mean That One Does Not Value The Work.

I Grew Up In The Midst Of Poverty But Every Black Kid That I Knew Could Read And Write. We Have To Talk About The Fact That We Cannot Educate For Critical Consciousness If We Have A Group Of People Who Cannot Access Fanon, Cabral, Or Audre Lorde Because They Can’t Read Or Write. How Did Malcolm X Radicalize His Consciousness? He Did It Through Books. If You Deprive Working-class And Poor Black People Of Access To Reading And Writing, You Are Making Them That Much Farther Removed From Being A Class That Can Engage In Revolutionary Resistance.

I Think This Is What People Misunderstand About Martin Luther King Saying To Love Your Enemies. They Think He Was Just Using This Silly Little Phrase, But What He Meant Was That As Black Americans We Need To Let Our Anger Go, Because Holding On To It We Hold Ourselves Down. We Oppress Ourselves By Holding On To Anger.

If We Want A Beloved Community, We Must Stand For Justice.

Beloved Community

I Am Passionate About Everything In My Life--first And Foremost, Passionate About Ideas. And That's A Dangerous Person To Be In This Society, Not Just Because I'm A Woman, But Because It's Such A Fundamentally Anti-intellectual, Anti-critical Thinking Society. --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.

I'm So Disturbed When My Women Students Behave As Though They Can Only Read Women, Or Black Students Behave As Though They Can Only Read Blacks, Or White Students Behave As Though They Can Only Identify With A White Writer.

Because We Have Learned To Believe Negativity Is More Realistic, It Appears More Real Than Any Positive Voice.

..acts Of Appropriation Are Part Of The Process By Which We Make Ourselves. Appropriating - Taking Something For One’s Own Use - Need Not Be Synonymous With Exploitation. This Is Especially True Of Cultural Appropriation. The “use” One Makes Of What Is Appropriated Is The Crucial Factor.

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.

It Is Obvious That Many Women Have Appropriated Feminism To Serve Their Own Ends, Especially Those White Women Who Have Been At The Forefront Of The Movement; But Rather Than Resigning Myself To This Appropriation I Choose To Re-appropriate The Term “feminism,” To Focus On The Fact That To Be “feminist” In Any Authentic Sense Of The Term Is To Want For All People, Female And Male, Liberation From Sexist Role Patterns, Domination, And Oppression.

When We Work With Love We Renew The Spirit; That Renewal Is An Act Of Self-love, It Nurtures Our Growth.

A Central Tenet Of Modern Feminist Thought Has Been The Assertion That "all Women Are Oppressed." This Assertion Implies That Women Share A Common Lot, That Factors Like Class, Race, Religion, Sexual Preference, Etc. Do Not Create A Diversity Of Experience That Determines The Extent To Which Sexism Will Be An Oppressive Force In The Lives Of Individual Women.

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.

... The Outcome Of The Clarence Thomas Hearings And His Subsequent Appointment To The Supreme Court Shows How Misguided, Narrow Notions Of Racial Solidarity That Suppress Dissent And Critique Can Lead Black Folks To Support Individuals Who Will Not Protect Their Rights.

We Are Rarely Able To Interact Only With Folks Like Ourselves, Who Think As We Do. No Matter How Much Some Of Us Deny This Reality And Long For The Safety And Familiarity Of Sameness, Inclusive Ways Of Knowing And Living Offer Us The Only True Way To Emancipate Ourselves From The Divisions That Limit Our Minds And Imaginations.

Often In My Lectures When I Use The Phrase “imperialist White-supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy” To Describe Our Nation’s Political System, Audiences Laugh. No One Has Ever Explained Why Accurately Naming This System Is Funny. The Laughter Is Itself A Weapon Of Patriarchal Terrorism.

What's Really Sad Is That So Many Young Women Between The Ages Of 16 And 25 Are Ignorant And They Already Believe That Women Get The Same Pay As Men. They Don't Even Really Understand That Equality Hasn't Happened With The Pay Force.

If Only One Party In The Relationship Is Working To Create Love, To Create The Space Of Emotional Connection, The Dominator Model Remains In Place And The Relationship Just Becomes A Site For Continuous Power Struggle.

The Most Basic Activism We Can Have In Our Lives Is To Live Consciously In A Nation Living In Fantasies. Living Consciously Is Living With A Core Of Healthy Self-esteem. You Will Face Reality, You Will Not Delude Yourself.

Changing How We See Images Is Clearly One Way To Change The World.

Changing The World

Teaching Black Studies, I Find That Students Are Quick To Label A Black Person Who Has Grown Up In A Predominantly White Setting And Attended Similar Schools As "not Black Enough." ...our Concept Of Black Experience Has Been Too Narrow And Constricting.

The World Demands That You Work For It, Make Families, Provide, Take No Time To Listen To Your Own Heart Beating.

It Is A Distortion Of The Notion Of Romantic Love To Want To See Obedience As The Quintessential Expression Of Respect.

It Is Crucial For The Future Of The Black Liberation Struggle That We Remain Ever Mindful That Ours Is A Shared Struggle, That We Are Each Other's Fate.

I Feel That My Environment Reflects My Belief In The Grace And Art And Elegance Of Living Simply.

Feminist Pedagogy Can Only Be Liberatory If It Is Truly Revolutionary Because The Mechanisms Of Appropriation Within White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy Are Able To Co-opt With Tremendous Ease That Which Merely Appears Radical Or Subversive

It's In The Act Of Having To Do Things That You Don't Want To That You Learn Something About Moving Past The Self. Past The Ego.

The Soul Of Our Politics Is The Commitment To Ending Domination.

Many Spiritual Teachers - In Buddhism, In Islam - Have Talked About First-hand Experience Of The World As An Important Part Of The Path To Wisdom, To Enlightenment.

Loving Friendships Provide Us With A Space To Experience The Joy Of Community In A Relationship Where We Learn To Process All Our Issues, To Cope With Differences And Conflict While Staying Connected.

There Are Times When Personal Experience Keeps Us From Reaching The Mountain Top And So We Let It Go Because The Weight Of It Is Too Heavy. And Sometimes The Mountain Top Is Difficult To Reach With All Our Resources, Factual And Confessional, So We Are Just There, Collectively Grasping, Feeling The Limitations Of Knowledge, Longing Together, Yearning For A Way To Reach That Highest Point. Even This Yearning Is A Way To Know.

The Practice Of Love Offers No Place Of Safety. We Risk Loss, Hurt, Pain. We Risk Being Acted Upon By Forces Outside Our Control.

Few People Who Are Hit Once By Someone They Love Respond In The Way They Might To A Singular Physical Assault By A Stranger.

A Central Theme Of All About Love Is That From Childhood Into Adulthood We Are Often Taught Misguided And False Assumptions About The Nature Of Love. Perhaps The Most Common False Assumption About Love Is That Love Means We Will Not Be Challenged Or Changed.

…“white Supremacy” Is A Much More Useful Term For Understanding The Complicity Of People Of Color In Upholding And Maintaining Racial Hierarchies That Do Not Involve Force (i.e Slavery, Apartheid) Than The Term “internalized Racism”- A Term Most Often Used To Suggest That Black People Have Absorbed Negative Feelings And Attitudes About Blackness. The Term “white Supremacy” Enables Us To Recognize Not Only That Black People Are Socialized To Embody The Values And Attitudes Of White Supremacy, But We Can Exercise “white Supremacist Control” Over Other Black People.

Love Does Have The Power To Redeem But Only If We Are Ready For Redemption. Love Saves Us Only If We Want To Be Saved.

I Think This Is Often Misunderstood In The West, Where People Feel That There Can Be No Justice Unless Everything Is The Same. This Is Part Of Why I Feel We Have To Relearn How We Think About Love, Because We Think About Love So Much In Terms Of The Self.

Feminism As A Theoretical Enterprise Is Approached Differently By Black Women Depending On Where We Are. There Are More Reformist Black Women Who Tend To Use The Phrase "black Feminism".

It Was The World Of Southern, Rural, Black Growing Up, Of Folks Sitting On Porches Day And Night, Of Folks Calling Your Mama, 'cause You Walked By And Didn't Speak, And Of The Switch Waiting When You Got Home So That You Could Be Taught Some Manners. It Was A World Of Single Black Older Women Schoolteachers, Dedicated, Tough; They Had Taught Your Mama, Her Sisters, And Her Friends. They Knew Your People In Ways That You Never Would And Shared Their Insight, Keeping Us In Touch With Generations. It Was A World Where We Had A History.

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Thurgood Marshall

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