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Schools For Love Do Not Exist. Everyone Assumes That We Will Know How To Love Instinctively. Despite Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary, We Still Accept That The Family Is The Primary School For Love. Those Of Us Who Do Not Learn How To Love Among Family Are Expected To Experience Love In Romantic Relationships. However This Love Often Eludes Us.

-Bell Hooks

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Schools For Love Do

Bell Hooks

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Schools For Love Do Not Exist. Everyone Assumes That We Will Know How To Love Instinctively. Despite Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary, We Still Accept That The Family Is The Primary School For Love. Those Of Us Who Do Not Learn How To Love Among Family Are Expected To Experience Love In Romantic Relationships. However This Love Often Eludes Us.

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... Privacy Is ... Connected To A Politics Of Domination.

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Cult Of Personality

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

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The Capacity To Love Is Tied To Being Able To Be Awake, To Being Able To Move Out Of Yourself And Be With Someone Else In A Manner That Is Not About Your Desire To Possess Them, But To Be With Them, To Be In Union And Communion.

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All Our Silences In The Face Of Racist Assault Are Acts Of Complicity.

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A Good Teacher Is Someone Who Can Help You To Get Back To A Teacher Within.

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Beloved Community

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Western Culture

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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.

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.

When Liberal Whites Fail To Understand How They Can And/or Do Embody White Supremacist Values And Beliefs Even Though They May Not Embrace Racism As Prejudice Or Domination (especially Domination That Involves Coercive Control), They Cannot Recognize The Ways Their Actions Support And Affirm The Very Structure Of Racist Domination And Oppression That They Wish To See Eradicated.

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.

I Can Be Critical Of Beyoncé And Yet Also Appreciate Aspects Of Her Power And Representation. I Can Especially Critique The Way White Supremacist Aesthetics More Often Than Not Informs Her Presentation Of Self And Yet Still Acknowledge Her Beauty.

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.

One Difference With The Political Writings, Whether About Feminism Or Class, Is That The Intent Is To Change How People Think Of A Certain Political Reality; Whereas With Cultural Criticism, The Goal Is To Illuminate Something That Is Already There.

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.

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.

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

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.

Patriarchy Has No Gender.

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

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.

Fame Is Fun, Money Is Useful, Celebrity Can Be Exciting, But Finally Life Is About Optimal Well-being And How We Achieve That In Dominator Culture, In A Greedy Culture, In A Culture That Uses So Much Of The World’s Resources. How Do Men And Women, Boys And Girls, Live Lives Of Compassion, Justice And Love? And I Think That’s The Visionary Challenge For Feminism And All Other Progressive Movements For Social Change.

Justice Is Possible Without Equality, I Believe, Because Of Compassion And Understanding. If I Have Compassion, Then If I Have More Than You, Which Is Unequal, I Will Still Do The Just Thing By You.

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

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.

Time And Time Again When I Talk To Individuals About Approaching Love With Will And Intentionality, I Hear The Fear Expressed That This Will Bring An End To Romance. This Is Simply Not So. Approaching Romantic Love From Foundation Of Care, Knowledge, And Respect Actually Intensifies Romance

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.

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

I Celebrate Teaching That Enables Transgressions - A Movement Against And Beyond Boundaries. It Is That Movement Which Makes Education The Practice Of Freedom.

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."

It Is No Accident That This Homeplace, As Fragile And As Transitional As It May Be, A Makeshift Shed, A Small Bit Of Earth Where One Rests, Is Always Subject To Violation And Destruction. For When A People No Longer Have The Space To Construct Homeplace, We Cannot Build A Meaningful Community Of Resistance.

Choosing To Be Honest Is The First Step In The Process Of Love. There Is No Practitioner Of Love Who Deceives. Once The Choice Has Been Made To Be Honest, Then The Next Step On Love's Path Is Communication.

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.

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.

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I'm Lucky. I Think It's Good That I Have A Body Of Work That Addresses Different Things In Different Ways.

Why Is It That Many Contemporary Male Thinkers, Especially Men Of Color, Repudiate The Imperialist Legacy Of Columbus But Affirm Dimensions Of That Legacy By Their Refusal To Repudiate Patriarchy?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Challenge These Days, Is To Be Somewhere, To Belong To Some Particular Place, Invest Oneself In It, Draw Strength And Courage From It, To Dwell In A Community.

I Think We Have To Choose, What Are The Issues That Really Matter? We Have To Trust That.

I Feel Like There Is Always Something Trying To Pull Us Back Into Sleep, That There Is This Sort Of Seductive Quality In All The Hedonistic Pleasures That Pull On Us.

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.

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.

The Notion That Black Folks Have Nothing To Learn From Scholarship That May Reflect Racial Or Racist Biases Is Dangerous. It Promotes Closed-mindedness And A Narrow Understanding Of Knowledge To Hold That "race" Is Such An Overwhelming Concept That It Negates The Validity Of Any Insights Contained In A Work That May Have Some Racist Or Sexist Aspects.

When The Feminist Movement Was At Its Zenith In The Late 60's And Early 70's, There Was A Lot Of Moving Away From The Idea Of The Person. It Was: Let's Talk About The Ideas Behind The Work, And The People Matter Less. It Was Kind Of A Gimmicky Thing, But Lots Of Feminist Women Were Doing It. Many Of Us Took The Names Of Our Female Ancestors - Bell Hooks Is My Maternal Great Grandmother - To Honor Them And Debunk The Notion That We Were These Unique, Exceptional Women. We Wanted To Say, Actually, We Were The Products Of The Women Who'd Gone Before Us.

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.

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

Since The Notion That We Should All Forsake Attachment To Race And/or Cultural Identity And Be “just Humans” Within The Framework Of White Supremacy Has Usually Meant That Subordinate Groups Must Surrender Their Identities, Beliefs, Values, And Assimilate By Adopting The Values And Beliefs Of Privileged-class Whites, Rather Than Promoting Racial Harmony This Thinking Has Created A Fierce Cultural Protectionism.

If I Were Really Asked To Define Myself, I Wouldn’t Start With Race; I Wouldn’t Start With Blackness; I Wouldn’t Start With Gender; I Wouldn’t Start With Feminism. I Would Start With Stripping Down To What Fundamentally Informs My Life, Which Is That I’m A Seeker On The Path. I Think Of Feminism, And I Think Of Anti-racist Struggles As Part Of It. But Where I Stand Spiritually Is, Steadfastly, On A Path About Love.

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.

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.

Solidarity Is Not The Same As Support. To Experience Solidarity, We Must Have A Community Of Interests, Shared Beliefs And Goals Around Which To Unite, To Build Sisterhood. Support Can Be Occasional. It Can Be Given And Just As Easily Withdrawn. Solidarity Requires Sustained, Ongoing Commitment.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Changing The World

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

One Of The Greatest Difficulties The Left Faces In Reaching Out To Masses Of People In America Is Its Profound Disrespect Of Spirituality And Religious Life…people On The Left Need To Acknowledge – We Need To Grapple With – The Question Of Religion.

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

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.

Today Masses Of Black Women In The U.s. Refuse To Acknowledge That They Have Much To Gain By Feminist Struggle. They Fear Feminism. They Have Stood In Place So Long That They Are Afraid To Move. They Fear Change. They Fear Losing What Little They Have.

... Feminist Solidarity Rooted In A Commitment To Progressive Politics Must Include A Space For Rigorous Critique, For Dissent, Orwe Are Doomed To Reproduce In Progressive Communities The Very Forms Of Domination We Seek To Oppose.

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

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.

Stereotypes Abound When There Is Distance. They Are An Invention, A Pretense That One Knows When The Steps That Would Make Real Knowing Possible Cannot Be Taken Or Are Not Allowed.

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

The Significance Of Feminist Movement (when It Is Not Co-opted By Opportunistic, Reactionary Forces) Is That It Offers A New Ideological Meeting Ground For The Sexes, A Space For Criticism, Struggle, And Transformation.

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.

Hope Is Essential To Any Political Struggle For Radical Change When The Overall Social Climate Promotes Disillusionment And Despair.

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.

My Hope Emerges From Those Places Of Struggle Where I Witness Individuals Positively Transforming Their Lives And The World Around Them. Educating Is A Vocation Rooted In Hopefulness. As Teachers We Believe That Learning Is Possible, That Nothing Can Keep An Open Mind From Seeking After Knowledge And Finding A Way To Know.

Knowing Love Or The Hope Of Knowing Love Is The Anchor That Keeps Us From Falling Into That Sea Of Despair.

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.

The Rage Of The Oppressed Is Never The Same As The Rage Of The Privileged.

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

Dare To Look At The Intersectionalities.

Intersectionality

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