THE INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH IS BEST

THE INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH IS BEST

bell hooks, social critic, author, professor, KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM, New York: Henry Holt, 1995,

p. np.

Surely it is patriarchal condescension that leads black folks, particularly sexist black men, to assume that black folks, particularly sexist black men, to assume that black females are incapable of embracing revolutionary feminism in ways that would enhance rather than diminish black liberation, despite the continued overt racism and racist agendas of those groups of white women who can most easily lay claim to the term “feminism” and project their conservative and reactionary agendas. Often this condescension merely masks the allegiance to sexism and patriarchal thinking in black life. Certainly, the labeling of black women who engage in feminist thinking as race traitors is meant to prevent us From embracing feminist politics as surely as white power feminism acts to exclude our voices and silence our critiques. In this case both groups are acting to protect and maintain the privileges, however relative, that they receive in the existing social structure.

bell hooks, social critic, author, professor, KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM, New York: Henry Holt, 1995,

p. 69.

If we start with the premise that black liberation struggle, and all our efforts at self-determination, a strengthened when black males and females participate as equals in daily life and struggle, it is clear that we cannot create a cultural climate where these conditions exist without first committing ourselves to a feminist agenda that is specific to black life, that concerns itself with ending sexism and sexist oppression in our diverse communities. To advance this agenda we would need to rethink our notions of manhood and womanhood. Rather than continuing to see them as opposites, with different “inherent” characteristics, we would need to recognize biological differences without seeing them as markers of specific gender traits. This would mean no longer thinking that it is “natural” for boys to be strong and girls to be weak, for boys to be active and girls to be passive. Ours task in parenting and in education would be to encourage in both females and males the capacity to be holistic, to be capable of being both strong and weak, active and passive, etc., in response to specific contexts. Rather than defining manhood in relation to sexuality, we would acknowledge it in relation to biology: boys become men, girls women, with the understanding that both categories are synonymous with selfhood.

bell hooks, Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Oberlin College, and Mary Childers, “A Conversation About Race and Class,” CONFLICTS IN FEMINISM, New York: Routledge, 1990, p.75.

Women seem to be particularly threatened when our differences are marked by class privilege. What do you do when you are not privileged and have contact with a privileged woman of any race? Or when there is race and class difference? What gives us a space to bond? These are questions we have had trouble answering. I want to privilege political commitment because in this culture we do not emphasize enough that you can choose to be politically committed in ways that change your behavior and action. We need to do more work examining the reasons white women and black women of all classes view one another with suspicion, thinking we are trying to take something from each other (whether it is the privileged white woman who thinking that a black woman is trying to take some of her power from her or to make herself more powerful or it is black women feeling like thee are these white women who have everything and want more). I don’t think we really understand either historically or in terms of contemporary circumstances why we view each other in such incredibly negative terms. Certainly as a group white males have been more oppressive to black women, yet black women don’t unequivocally view white males in the hostile, suspicious ways that we often view white women. And I would say vice versa as well. Feminist theory needs to study historically, sociologically, and anthropologically how we see one another and why it has been so hard or us to change how we see one another.

HOOKS' CRITICISM IS INEFFECTIVE

Maggie Gallagher, co-author (with Linda Waite) of The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, NATIONAL REVIEW vol. 53, 1/22/2001, p. 50.

Which is exactly bell hook’s complaint. An unreconstructed black radical feminist, hooks (who insists on the lowercase letters) has nothing but disdain for "reformists" like Estrich who sought only to claim the "class privilege" their brothers enjoyed. "While it was in the interest of mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to suppress visionary feminist thinking reformist feminists were also eager to silence these forces. Reformist feminism became their route to class mobility." hooks is equally disdainful of what she calls "lifestyle feminism," in which "the politics was slowly removed from feminism." I wish I could tell you in more detail what hook’s revolution might look like, but in 123 pages she never gets around to explaining what "ending sexist oppression" means, aside from abortion on demand and contraceptives for all. Equally hard to explain is her naive idea that all that prevents the triumph of radical feminism is bad marketing: "Let's start over. Let's have T-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip-hop music, television and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of printed material that tells the world that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression."
2. hooks' FASCINATION WITH pop culture WEAKENS HER CRITIQUE

Catharine R. Kelly, staff writer, “For bell, love goes the way of BMW's, Buppiedom and Big Houses,” MICHIGAN CITIZEN, 3/14/98, p. B1.

Bell Hooks and her BMW have disappointed me for the last time. Posing as a "feminist author" Bell Hooks' interview with Jada Pinkett in the March issue of Essence magazine falls short of her used-to-be scathing critiques of dominant culture. I was initially excited by the cover story - Bell Hooks interviewing Jada Pinkett for Essence - a potentially informing, empowering article for Black women. I was surprised by what I read. Hook's interview actually reinforces white-male-dominated patriarchal ideas she built her career fighting. Like Jada, I read Hooks' first book as a young women in college. I was impressed with her passion in telling the historical oppression of Black women in America. Her follow-up works equally impressed me. However, in recent year Hooks' work seems to have gone the direction of pop culture rather than a critique of dominant culture. In the past hooks has defended this move by arguing she should be allowed to "grow" and should not be pigeonholed. Yes, Black people and especially artists are often pigeonholed, yet at one point, Hooks was an important player in developing Black feminist theory. She began Ain't I a Woman in college. Maybe, like the older civil rights generation, she has gone mainstream - her passion lost, lulled into a more "comfortable" and "middle class" existence. It is clear from her Essence interview the "rage of youth" in Ain't I a Woman is gone.