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 HooksIf I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.
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 HooksAny 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.
Bell Hooks