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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.

-Bell Hooks

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The White Worker Who

Bell Hooks

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If You Do Not Know What You Feel, Then It Is Difficult To Choose Love; It Is Better To Fall. Then You Do Not Have To Be Responsible For Your Actions.

I 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Telling The Truth

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To Truly Love We Must Learn To Mix Various Ingredients - Care, Affection, Recognition, Respect, Commitment, And Trust, As Well As Honest And Open Communication.

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.

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.

I Think Black People Need To Take Self-esteem Seriously.

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.

Whenever Domination Is Present, Love Is Lacking.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

Professors Rarely Speak Of The Place Of Eros Or The Erotic In Our Classrooms. Trained In The Philosophical Context Of Western Metaphysical Dualism, Many Of Us Have Accepted The Notion That There Is A Split Between The Body And The Mind. Believing This, Individuals Enter The Classroom To Teach As Though Only The Mind Is Present, And Not The Body.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Academy Is Not Paradise. But Learning Is A Place Where Paradise Can Be Created.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

I 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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Feminism Is For Everybody

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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 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.

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

I Write These Words To Bear Witness To The Primacy Of Resistance Struggle In Any Situation Of Domination (even Within Family Life); To The Strength And Power That Emerges From Sustained Resistance And The Profound Conviction That These Forces Can Be Healing, Can Protect Us From Dehumanization And Despair.

I Think We Have To Talk About Educating The People For Critical Consciousness About What Anarchy Is.

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.

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

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

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.

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."

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

Living Simply Makes Loving Simple.

Shaming Is One Of The Deepest Tools Of Imperialist, White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy Because Shame Produces Trauma And Trauma Often Produces Paralysis.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Abuse And Neglect Negate Love. Care And Affirmation, The Opposite Of Abuse And Humiliation, Are The Foundation Of Love. No One Can Rightfully Claim To Be Loving When Behaving Abusively.

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

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

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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 An Action, Never Simply A Feeling.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

To Be Truly Visionary We Have To Root Our Imagination In Our Concrete Reality While Simultaneously Imagining Possibilities Beyond That Reality.

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

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

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.

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.

There Is No Politically Neutral Art.

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.

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.

Dare To Look At The Intersectionalities.

Intersectionality

If We Move Away From Either/or Thinking, And If We Think, Okay, Every Day Of My Life That I Walk Out Of My House I Am A Combination Of Race, Gender, Class, Sexual Preference And Religion Or What Have You, What Gets Foregrounded?

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

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.

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.

One Of The Things That We Must Do As Teachers Is Twirl Around And Around, And Find Out What Works With The Situation That We're In. Our Models Might Not Work. And That Twirling, Changing, Is Part Of The Empowerment.

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

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.

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.

Hip-hop Is Diverse. But The White, Capitalist Producers And Distributors Of Hip-hop Are Most Interested In The Hip-hip That Is Misogynist, That Is Black-hating, That Is Pugilistic, That Is To Say All About Fighting And War And Killing And Gangsterism.

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

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

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

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

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