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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.

-Bell Hooks

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The Classroom, With All

Bell Hooks

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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.

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

Loving Relationships

In An Ideal World We Would All Learn In Childhood To Love Ourselves. We Would Grow, Being Secure In Our Worth And Value, Spreading Love Wherever We Went, Letting Our Light Shine. If We Did Not Learn Self-love In Our Youth, There Is Still Hope. The Light Of Love Is Always In Us, No Matter How Cold The Flame. It Is Always Present, Waiting For The Spark To Ignite, Waiting For The Heart To Awaken And Call Us Back To The First Memory Of Being The Life Force Inside A Dark Place Waiting To Be Born - Waiting To See The Light.

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

Widespread Cultural Acceptance Of Lying Is A Primary Reason Many Of Us Will Never Know Love

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."

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

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.

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

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.

I Often Find It Easier To Be Teaching Or Giving To Others, And Often Struggle With The Place Of My Own Pleasure And Joy.

I Mostly Want To Remind Her Of The Recipes Of Healing, And Give Her My Own Made-on-the Spot Remedy For The Easing Of Her Pain. I Tell Her, “get A Pen. Stop Crying So You Can Write This Down And Start Working On It Tonight.” My Remedy Is Long. But The Last Item On The List Says: “when You Wake Up And Find Yourself Living Someplace Where There Is Nobody You Love And Trust, No Community, It Is Time To Leave Town – To Pack Up And Go (you Can Even Go Tonight). And Where You Need To Go Is Any Place Where There Are Arms That Can Hold You, That Will Not Let You Go.

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

Shame Produces Trauma. Trauma Produces Paralysis.

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.

I Guess I Wish We Could Talk About: What Does It Mean To Have A Politics Of Intersectionality That Also Privileges What Form Of Domination Is Most Oppressing Us At A Given Moment In Time.

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.

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.

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

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

But Love Is Really More Of An Interactive Process. It's About What We Do Not Just What We Feel. It's A Verb, Not A Noun.

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.

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

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.

I Think Inequality Is In Our Minds. I Think This Is What We Learn Through Practice... The Bridge Of Illusion Must Be Shattered In Order For A Real Bridge To Be Constructed. One Of The Things We Learn Is That Inequality Is An Illusion.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Whenever Domination Is Present, Love Is Lacking.

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

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.

No Other Group In America Has So Had Their Identity Socialized Out Of Existence As Have Black Women... When Black People Are Talked About The Focus Tends To Be On Black Men; And When Women Are Talked About The Focus Tends To Be On White Women.

Do Not Expect To Receive The Love From Someone Else You Do Not Give Yourself.

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

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

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.

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."

Women Have Endeavored To Guide Men To Love Because Patriarchal Thinking Has Sanctioned This Work Even As It Has Undermined It By Teaching Men To Refuse Guidance...a Useful Gift All Love's Practitioners Can Give Is The Offering Of Forgiveness. It Not Only Allows Us To Move Away From Blame, From Seeing Others As The Cause Of Our Sustained Lovelessness, But It Enables Us To Experience Agency, To Know We Can Be Responsible For Giving And Finding Love.

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

If Black Women Stand Strong And Our Commitment Is To Ending Domination I Know That I'm Supporting Black Males, Black Children Male And Female Black Elderly Because The Bottom Line Is The Struggle To End Domination In All Its Forms.

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.

While It Has Become “cool” For White Folks To Hang Out With Black People And Express Pleasure In Black Culture, Most White People Do Not Feel That This Pleasure Should Be Linked To Unlearning Racism.

Lying Has Become So Much The Accepted Norm That People Lie Even When It Would Be Simpler To Tell The Truth.

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

I Think The Number One Thing Black Women And All Black People Should Be Paying Attention To Is Our Health.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Honesty And Openness Is Always The Foundation Of Insightful Dialogue.

..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.

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

Within A Capitalist Consumer Society, The Cult Of Personality Has The Power To Subsume Ideas, To Make The Person, The Personality Into The Product And Not The Work Itself.

Cult Of Personality

…“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.

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.

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.

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

Without Justice There Can Be No Love.

It Is Important And Vital Is To Keep That Education For Critical Consciousness Around Intersectionalities, So That People Are Able To Not Focus On One Thing And Blame One Group, But Be Able To Look Holistically At The Way Intersectionality Informs All Of Us: Whiteness, Gender, Sexual Preferences, Etc. Only Then Can We Have A Realistic Handle On The Political And Cultural World We Live Within.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Wounded Child Inside Many Females Is A Girl Who Was Taught From Early Childhood On That She Must Become Something Other Than Herself, Deny Her True Feelings, In Order To Attract And Please Others.

Dare I Speak ,to Oppressed And Opressor In The Same Voice? Dare I Speak To You In A Language That Will Move Beyond The Boundaries Of Domination- A Language, That Will Not Bind You, Fence You In, Or Hold You? Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle. The Oppressed Struggle In Language To Recover Ourselves, To Reconcile, To Reunite, To Renew. Our Words Are Not Without Meaning, They Are An Action, A Resistance. Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

The Greater Our Commitment, The More Likely Our Love Will Last.

Love Is An Action, Never Simply A Feeling.

What We Cannot Imagine Cannot Come Into Being.

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

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.

The White Worker Who Has Been Displaced At General Motors Has More In Common With The Displaced Black Worker Than Those Larger White Ceo's, And Those Wall Street People Who Are Determining Their Fate... Whose Thievery And Greed Is Determining Their Fate.

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

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.

Even The Wealthiest Professional Woman Can Be "brought Down" By Being In A Relationship Where She Longs To Be Loved And Is Consistently Lied To. To The Degree That She Trusts Her Male Companion, Lying And Other Forms Of Betrayal Will Most Likely Shatter Her Self-confidence And Self-esteem.

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.

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

Writing Is My Passion. It Is A Way To Experience The Ecstatic. The Root Understanding Of The Word Ecstasy—“to Stand Outside”—comes To Me In Those Moments When I Am Immersed So Deeply In The Act Of Thinking And Writing That Everything Else, Even Flesh, Falls Away.

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.

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.

Sadly, Children's Passion For Thinking Often Ends When They Encounter A World That Seeks To Educate Them For Conformity And Obedience Only.

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.

Part Of Why I Have Started Writing About Love Is Feeling That Our Culture Is Forgetting What Martin Luther King Taught. We Name More And More Streets And Schools After Him But That's Almost Irrelevant, Because What Is To Be Remembered Is That Strength To Love.

Yesterday I Was Thinking About The Whole Idea Of Genius And Creative People, And The Notion That If You Create Some Magical Art, Somehow That Exempts You From Having To Pay Attention To The Small Things.

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.

Both Men And Women Remain In Dysfunctional, Loveless Relationships When It Is Materially Opportune.

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

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.

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.

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

Imagine Living In A World Where There Is No Domination, Where Females And Males Are Not Alike Or Even Always Equal, But Where A Vision Of Mutuality Is The Ethos Shaping Our Interaction.

In Our Culture Privacy Is Often Confused With Secrecy. Open, Honest, Truth-telling Individuals Value Privacy. We All Need Spaces Where We Can Be Alone With Thoughts And Feelings - Where We Can Experience Healthy Psychological Autonomy And Can Choose To Share When We Want To. Keeping Secrets Is Usually About Power, About Hiding And Concealing Information.

Keeping Secrets

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.

None Of Us Should Be Ashamed To Speak Of Our Class Power Or Lack Of It. Overcoming Fear, Even The Fear Of Being Immodest, And Acting Courageously To Bring Issues Of Class- Especially Radical Standpoints – Into The Discourse Of Blackness Is A Gesture Of Militant Defiance, One That Runs Counter To Bourgeois Insistence That We Think Of “money” In Particular And Class In General As Private Matters.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Being Oppressed Means The Absence Of Choices

Most Of Us Did Not Learn When We Were Young That Our Capacity To Be Self-loving Would Be Shaped By The Work We Do And Whether That Work Enhances Our Well-being.

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

Like Desire, Language Disrupts, Refuses To Be Contained Within Boundaries.

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.

The First Act Of Violence That Patriarchy Demands Of Males Is Not Violence Toward Women. Instead Patriarchy Demands Of All Males That They Engage In Acts Of Psychic Self-mutilation, That They Kill Off The Emotional Parts Of Themselves. If An Individual Is Not Successful In Emotionally Crippling Himself, He Can Count On Patriarchal Men To Enact Rituals Of Power That Will Assault His Self-esteem.

This Rule Of Silence Is Upheld When The Culture Refuses Everyone Easy Access Even To The Word “patriarchy.” Most Children Do Not Learn What To Call This System Of Institutionaliz Ed Gender Roles, So Rarely Do We Name It In Everyday Speech. This Silence Promotes Denial. And How Can We Organize To Challenge And Change A System That Cannot Be Named?

Why Is It So Difficult For Many White Folks To Understand That Racism Is Oppressive Not Because White Folks Have Prejudicial Feelings About Blacks (they Could Have Such Feelings And Leave Us Alone) But Because It Is A System That Promotes Domination And Subjugation?

As All Advocates Of Feminist Politics Know Most People Do Not Understand Sexism Or If They Do They Think It Is Not A Problem. Masses Of People Think That Feminism Is Always And Only About Women Seeking To Be Equal To Men. And A Huge Majority Of These Folks Think Feminism Is Anti-male. Their Misunderstanding Of Feminist Politics Reflects The Reality That Most Folks Learn About Feminism From Patriarchal Mass Media.

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.

Individuals Who Want To Believe That There Is No Fulfillment In Love, That True Love Does Not Exist, Cling To These Assumptions Because This Despair Is Actually Easier To Face Than The Reality That Love Is A Real Fact Of Life But Is Absent From Their Lives.

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.

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.

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

Part Of The Racialized Sexism Wants Everyone To Think That A 15-year Old Mexican Is Not A Girl, She’s A Woman. We Know She’s A Girl. We Can Never Emphasize This Enough, Because This Is The Fate Of Colored Girls Globally Right Now: The Denial Of Their Girlhood, The Denial Of Their Childhood, And The Constant State Of Risk And Danger They Are Living In.

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

. . .there Is An Element Of Play That Is Almost Ritualistic In Black Folk Life. It Serves To Mediate The Tensions, Stress, And Pain Of Constant Exploitation And Oppression.

A Very Hurting Thing For Black Americans - To Feel That We Can't Love Our Enemies. People Forget What A Great Tradition We Have As African-americans In The Practice Of Forgiveness And Compassion. And If We Neglect That Tradition, We Suffer.

...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.

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

Whether We Learn How To Love Ourselves And Others Will Depend On The Presence Of A Loving Environment. Self-love Cannot Flourish In Isolation.

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.

Our Freedom Is Sweet. It Will Be Sweeter When We Are All Free.

We Judge On The Basis Of What Somebody Looks Like, Skin Color, Whether We Think They're Beautiful Or Not. That Space On The Internet Allows You To Converse With Somebody With None Of Those Things Involved.

I Have Created A Life Style That Supports Contemplation, Service To Words.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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".

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.

Representation Is A Crucial Location Of Struggle For Any Exploited And Oppressed People Asserting Subjectivity And Decolonization Of The Mind.

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.

We All May Have Prejudices, But We're Not All Part Of A System That Reinforces, Reinvents And Reaffirms Itself Every Day Of Our Lives, Systemically.

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

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

... 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.

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

You Are Not Going To Destroy This Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy By Creating Your Own Version Of It.

Feminism Has Never Emerged From The Women Who Are Most Victimized By Sexist Oppression; Women Who Are Daily Beaten Down, Mentally, Physically, And Spiritually - Women Who Are Powerless To Change Their Condition In Life. They Are A Silent Majority.

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

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

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

Had Middle Class Black Women Begun A Movement In Which They Had Labeled Themselves "oppressed," No One Would Have Taken Them Seriously.

African American

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.

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

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 Think I Was Always Obsessed With Esthetics.

The Word "love" Is Most Often Defined As A Noun, Yet Al The More Astute Theorists Of Love Acknowledge That We Would All Love Better If We Used It As A Verb.

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.

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.

Love Is First And Foremost Exemplified By Action - By Practice - Not Solely By Feeling.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Changing The World

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.

We Know That So Much Of The War That Is Happening Is The Attempt Of One Group To Snatch The Resources Of Another Group.

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.

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

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.

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.

Fluidity Means That Our Black Identities Are Constantly Changing As We Respond To Circumstances In Our Families And Communities Of Origin, And As We Interact With A Wider World.

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

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.

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.

It's Interesting--the Way In Which One Has To Balance Life--because You Have To Know When To Let Go And When To Pull Back.... There's Always Some Liminal (as Opposed To Subliminal) Space In Between Which Is Harder To Inhabit Because It Never Feels As Safe As Moving From One Extreme To Another.

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

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

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.

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

To Be Changed By Ideas Was Pure Pleasure. But To Learn Ideas That Ran Counter To Values And Beliefs Learned At Home Was To Place Oneself At Risk, To Enter The Danger Zone. Home Was The Place Where I Was Forced To Conform To Someone Else’s Image Of Who And What I Should Be. School Was The Place Where I Could Forget That Self And, Through Ideas, Reinvent Myself.

Spirituality And Spiritual Life Give Us The Strength To 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.

Sadly, Anarchy Has Gotten Such A Bad Name. We Don't Really See Much Evidence Of It Because People Associate It With Reckless Abandon.

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

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

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.

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

Feminism Is A Movement To End Sexism, Sexist Exploitation, And Oppression.

It Is Necessary To Remember, As We Think Critically About Domination, That We All Have The Capacity To Act In Ways That Oppress, Dominate, Wound (whether Or Not That Power Is Institutionalized). It Is Necessary To Remember That It Is First The Potential Oppressor Within That We Must Resist – The Potential Victim Within That We Must Rescue – Otherwise We Cannot Hope For An End To Domination, For Liberation.

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

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.

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.

None Of Us, Irrespective Of Our Sexual Preference And/or Practice, Imagine That We Can Have An Intimate Relationship With A Partner And Always Have Seamless Harmony. Indeed, Most Of Us Assume That Once The “honeymoon” Period Is Over Differences Will Emerge And Conflicts Will Happen. Positively, We Also Assume That We Will Be “safe“ In Those Moments; That Even If Voices Are Raised And Emotions Expressed Are Intense, There Will Not Be And Should Not Be Any Abuse Or Any Reason To Be Unsafe, And That The Will To Connect And Communicate Will Prevail.

Intimate Relationships

When I Think About The Auto-industry And How It Was One Of The Industries That Brought All Of These Black Men From The South To Michigan And Other Places To Make More Money Than They Could Ever Make In The Cotton Fields Or The Agricultural World Of The South... What's Happening Now Is All Of That Is Closing Down, And We Know That It's Going To Reopen In Southern Places, Focusing On Mexican And Other Migrant Workers To Come And Work Cheaply And Get None Of The Benefits.

I Want There To Be A Place In The World Where People Can Engage In One Another’s Differences In A Way That Is Redemptive, Full Of Hope And Possibility. Not This “in Order To Love You, I Must Make You Something Else”. That’s What Domination Is All About, That In Order To Be Close To You, I Must Possess You, Remake And Recast You.

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

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.

I Have Been Thinking About The Notion Of Perfect Love As Being Without Fear, And What That Means For Us In A World That's Becoming Increasingly Xenophobic, Tortured By Fundamentalism And Nationalism.

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.

Even The Most Subjected Person Has Moments Of Rage And Resentment So Intense That They Respond, They Act Against. There Is An Inner Uprising That Leads To Rebellion, However Short- Lived. It May Be Only Momentary But It Takes Place. That Space Within Oneself Where Resistance Is Possible Remains.

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