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 worldโs resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think thatโs the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change.
Bell Hooksโฆโwhite supremacyโ is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term โinternalized racismโ- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term โwhite supremacyโ enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise โwhite supremacist controlโ over other black people.
Bell HooksKnowledge 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.
Bell HooksWomen 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.
Bell Hooks