Quote

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 Hooks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bell Hooks
Facts
Stood
Women
Feminism
Firsts
Worked
First
Study
Always
Class
Reacting
Fact
Bourgeois
White
Studies
Black
Classes

More quotes by Bell Hooks

Image
One of the things I find most exciting is talking with people who are working with my work. Who are using it in some way with their life to address everyday politics of meaning.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
Of all the definitions of love that abound in our universe, a special favorite of mine is... “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
Bell Hooks
Image
My focus has always been on the work - that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That's where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.
Bell Hooks
Image
Solidarity is not the same as support. To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood. Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment.
Bell Hooks
Image
The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem.
Bell Hooks
Image
There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it's the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
I think the number one thing Black women and all Black people should be paying attention to is our health.
Bell Hooks
Image
We don't hear much from revolutionary feminists who are white because they're not serving the bourgeois agenda of the status quo.
Bell Hooks
Image
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.
Bell Hooks
Image
Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.
Bell Hooks
Image
My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them. Educating is a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know.
Bell Hooks
Image
The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom.
Bell Hooks