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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.

-Bell Hooks

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Since The Notion That

Bell Hooks

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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.

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Love Relationship

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African American

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Definition Of Love

When I Write Provocative Social And Cultural Criticism That Causes Readers To Stretch Their Minds, To Think Beyond Set Paradigms, I Think Of That Work As Love In Action. While It May Challenge, Disturb And At Times Even Frighten Or Enrage Readers, Love Is Always The Place Where I Begin And End.

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.

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.

Couples Who Rarely Or Never Have Sex Can Know Lifelong Love.

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.

To Me, A Woman Can't Be A Feminist Just Because She Is A Woman. She Is A Feminist Because She Begins To Divest Herself Of Sexist Ways Of Thinking And Revolutionizes Her Consciousness.

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.

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.

..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.

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.

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

I Think Stress Is Anything Going On In Our Lives That Impinges On Our Capacity To Have Optimum Well Being.

White Women And Black Men Have It Both Ways. They Can Act As Oppressor Or ... And Oppression Of Others.

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.

Feminist Politics Aims To End Domination, To Free Us To Be Who We Are - To Live Lives Where We Love Justice, Where We Can Live In Peace. Feminism Is For Everybody.

The Classroom, With All Its Limitations, Remains A Location Of Possibility. In That Field Of Possibility We Have The Opportunity To Labor For Freedom, To Demand Of Ourselves And Our Comrades, An Openness Of Mind And Heart That Allows Us To Face Reality Even As We Collectively Imagine Ways To Move Beyond Boundaries, To Transgress. This Is Education As The Practice Of Freedom.

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.

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.

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

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.

Women Are Often Belittled For Trying To Resurrect These Men And Bring Them Back To Life And To Love. They Are In A World That Would Be Even More Alienated And Violent If Caring Women Did Not Do The Work Of Teaching Men Who Have Lost Touch With Themselves How To Love Again. This Labor Of Love Is Futile Only When The Men In Question Refuse To Awaken, Refuse Growth. At This Point It Is A Gesture Of Self-love For Women To Break Their Commitment And Move On.

Self-love Is The Foundation Of Our Loving Practice. Without It Our Other Efforts To Love Fail. Giving Ourselves Love We Provide Our Inner Being With The Opportunity To Have The Unconditional Love We May Have Always Longed To Receive From Someone Else.

To Counter The Fixation On A Rhetoric Of Victimhood, Black Folks Must Engage In A Discourse Of Self-determination.

It's Really Important To Have Life Strategies And Part Of That Is Sort Of Knowing Where You Want To Go So You Can Have A Map That Helps You To Get There. And The Traditional Way Tells Us Oh We Get Into School And Someone Else Advises Us, Helps Us, But That Often Does Not Work For African Americans Female And Male. Because What Works For The Dominant Culture Often Does Not Work For Us.

African American

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

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

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

Sexism Has Never Rendered Women Powerless. It Has Either Suppressed Their Strength Or Exploited It.

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

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.

When We Face Pain In Relationships Our First Response Is Often To Sever Bonds Rather Than To Maintain Commitment.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Beloved Community

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.

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".

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.

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

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.

There Is No Life To Be Found In Violence. Every Act Of Violence Brings Us Closer To Death. Whether It's The Mundane Violence We Do To Our Bodies By Overeating Toxic Food Or Drink Or The Extreme Violence Of Child Abuse, Domestic Warfare, Life-threatening Poverty, Addiction, Or State Terrorism.

I Think The Women's Movement Has Had A Major Impact On Everybody's Lives In Our Nation And In The World As A Whole.

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

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

I'm Tired Of The Naked, Raped, Beaten Black Woman Body. I Want To See An Image Of Black Femaleness That Alters Our Universe In Some Way.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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