bell hooks
bell hooks
American author, feminist, and social activist whose real name is Gloria Jean Watkins. She wrote "Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism".
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth25 September 1952
CityHopkinsville, KY
CountryUnited States of America
people goal black
What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.
white people focus
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.
self-esteem thinking people
I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.
thinking numbers people
I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health.
tired men people
I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.
college class people
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.
people focus political
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.
writing reality thinking
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.
love-is thinking self
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.
strong children struggle
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.
class white black
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."
teacher helping good-teacher
A good teacher is someone who can help you to get back to a teacher within.
hurt compassion practice
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.
writing love-is thinking
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.