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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."

-Bell Hooks

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The Fact Is That

Bell Hooks

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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."

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I Still Think It's Important For People To Have A Sharp, Ongoing Critique Of Marriage In Patriarchal Society — Because Once You Marry Within A Society That Remains Patriarchal, No Matter How Alternative You Want To Be Within Your Unit, There Is Still A Culture Outside You That Will Impose Many, Many Values On You Whether You Want Them To Or Not.

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

Telling The Truth

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

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.

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.

In Order For Me To Engage In A Revolutionary Struggle For Collective Black Self-determination, I Have To Engage Feminism Because That Becomes The Vehicle By Which I Project Myself As A Female Into The Heart Of The Struggle, But The Heart Of The Struggle Does Not Begin With Feminism. It Begins With An Understanding Of Domination And With A Critique Of Domination In All Its Forms.

Living Simply Makes Loving Simple.

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

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.

Contrary To What We May Have Been Taught To Think, Unnecessary And Unchosen Suffering Wounds Us But Need Not Scar Us For Life. It Does Mark Us. What We Allow The Mark Of Our Suffering To Become Is In Our Own Hands.

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

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.

Any Black Person Who Clings To The Misguided Notion That White People Represent The Embodiment Of All That Is Evil And Black People All That Is Good Remains Wedded To The Very Logic Of Western Metaphysical Dualism That Is The Heart Of Racist Binary Thinking. Such Thinking Is Not Liberatory. Like The Racist Educational Ideology It Mirrors And Imitates, It Invites A Closing Of The Mind.

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.

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

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

..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.

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

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

There Must Exist A Paradigm, A Practical Model For Social Change That Includes An Understanding Of Ways To Transform Consciousness That Are Linked To Efforts To Transform Structures.

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.

Spirituality And Spiritual Life Give Us The Strength To Love.

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.

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.

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.

Reviewing The Literature On Love I Noticed How Few Writers, Male Or Female, Talk About The Impact Of Patriarchy, The Way In Which Male Domination Of Women And Children Stands In The Ways Of Love.

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.

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.

Whenever Domination Is Present, Love Is Lacking.

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 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.

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

Young People Are Cynical About Love. Ultimately, Cynicism Is The Great Mask Of The Disappointed And Betrayed Heart.

Love Is An Action, Never Simply A Feeling.

Dare To Look At The Intersectionalities.

Intersectionality

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.

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

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

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

African American

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.

Without Justice There Can Be No Love.

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

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

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.

Dominator Culture Has Tried To Keep Us All Afraid, To Make Us Choose Safety Instead Of Risk, Sameness Instead Of Diversity. Moving Through That Fear, Finding Out What Connects Us, Revelling In Our Differences; This Is The Process That Brings Us Closer, That Gives Us A World Of Shared Values, Of Meaningful Community.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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.

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."

I Think It's Crazy For Us To Think That People Don't Understand What's Being Foregrounded In Their Lives At A Given Point In Time.

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

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.

One Of The Things I Find Most Exciting Is Talking With People Who Are Working With My Work. Who Are Using It In Some Way With Their Life To Address Everyday Politics Of Meaning.

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

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

To Love Well Is The Task In All Meaningful Relationships, Not Just Romantic Bonds.

Meaningful Relationship

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Patriarchy Has No Gender.

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.

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.

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

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.

Feminism Is The Struggle To End Sexist Oppression. Its Aim Is Not To Benefit Solely Any Specific Group Of Women, Any Particular Race Or Class Of Women. It Does Not Privilege Women Over Men. It Has The Power To Transform Meaningfully All Our Lives

One Of The Major Differences I See In The Political Climate Today Is That There Is Less Collective Support For Coming To Critical Consciousness – In Communities, In Institutions, Among Friends.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

It's Interesting To Look At All The Aspects Where Everyday Americans, Many Of Whom Are Not College Educated, Are Thinking Deeply Now About Our Economic Structure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

When Women And Men Understand That Working To Eradicate Patriarchal Domination Is A Struggle Rooted In The Longing To Make A World Where Everyone Can Live Fully And Freely, Then We Know Our Work To Be A Gesture Of Love. Let Us Draw Upon That Love To Heighten Our Awareness, Deepen Our Compassion, Intensify Our Courage And Strengthen Our Commitment.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Radical Militant Feminist Believes That Women Of Color And Black Women In Particular Have Written The Cutting Edge Theory And Really Were The Individuals Who Exploded Feminist Theory Into The Directions That Has Made It More Powerful. So I See Us As The Leaders Not Just Of Black People And Black Women In Terms Of Feminism But In Terms Of The Movement As A Whole.

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.

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.

I Have Been Contemplating The Place And Meaning Of Love In Our Lives And Culture For Years. When A Subject Attracts My Intellectual And Emotional Imagination, I Am Long To Observe It From All Angles, To Know It Inside And Out.

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

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

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

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

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

Loving Relationships

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

There Is No Politically Neutral Art.

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.

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.

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

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Changing The World

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

To Teach In A Manner That Respects And Cares For The Souls Of Our Students Is Essential If We Are To Provide The Necessary Conditions Where Learning Can Most Deeply And Intimately Begin.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

Since Anti-racist Individuals Did Not Control Mass Media, The Media Became The Primary Tool That Would Be Used And Is Still Used To Convince Black Viewers, And Everyone Else, Of Black Inferiority.

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.

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.

Of All The Definitions Of Love That Abound In Our Universe, A Special Favorite Of Mine Is... “the Will To Extend One's Self For The Purpose Of Nurturing One's Own Or Another's Spiritual Growth.”

Feminist Education — The Feminist Classroom — Is And Should Be A Place Where There Is A Sense Of Struggle, Where There Is Visible Acknowledgment Of The Union Of Theory And Practice, Where We Work Together As Teachers And Students To Overcome The Estrangement And Alienation That Have Become So Much The Norm In The Contemporary University.

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

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.

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.

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

What We Do Is More Important Than What We Say Or What We Say We Believe.

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

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

All Efforts At Self-transformation Challenge Us To Engage In On-going, Critical Self-examination And Reflection About Feminist Practice, And About How We Live In The World. This Individual Commitment, When Coupled With Engagement In Collective Discussion, Provides A Space For Critical Feedback Which Strengthens Our Efforts To Change And Make Ourselves Anew.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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 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

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 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.

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 Transformative Power Of Love Is Not Fully Embraced In Our Society Because We Often Wrongly Believe That Torment And Anguish Are Our ‘natural’ Condition.

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

Beloved Community

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

To Return To Love, To Get The Love We Always Wanted But Never Had, To Have The Love We Want But Are Not Prepared To Give, We Seek Romantic Relationships. We Believe These Relationships, More Than Any Other, Will Rescue And Redeem Us. True 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 Do Get A Little Pissed At People Who Write Me And Want Me To Do Things, And Spell My Name Wrong.

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.

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

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.

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."

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