Racism Quotes by Bell Hooks

“black identities are diverse and complex…”

— bell hooks

America is a country that would rather talk about race than class.

— Bell Hooks

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

— Bell Hooks

Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.

— bell hooks

Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions…

— Bell Hooks

We all may have prejudices, but we're not all part of a system that reinforces, reinvents and reaffirms itself every day of…

— Bell Hooks

As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female…

— Bell Hooks

In general, the mass media tell us that black people are not loving, that our lives are so fraught with violence and…

— bell hooks

Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.

— bell hooks

Until the legacy of remembered and reenacted trauma is taken seriously, black America cannot heal.

— bell hooks

I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.

— Bell Hooks

What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the…

— Bell Hooks

Is it more important that you, as a white male, read my work and learn from it, or what you call me?…

— Bell Hooks

Right now, for many Americans, class is being foregrounded like never before because of the economic situation. It doesn't mean that race…

— Bell Hooks

Part of why I have started writing about love is feeling that our culture is forgetting what Martin Luther King taught. We…

— Bell Hooks

As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist…

— Bell Hooks

While it has become “cool” for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white…

— Bell Hooks

A very hurting thing for Black Americans - to feel that we can't love our enemies. People forget what a great tradition…

— Bell Hooks

“In a racially imperialist nation such as ours, it is the dominant race that reserves for itself the luxury of dismissing racial…

— bell hooks

Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings…

— Bell Hooks

Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is…

— Bell Hooks

“Even in the face of powerful structures of domination, it remains possible for each of us, especially those of us who are…

— bell hooks

I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiarity and via that joining,…

— Bell Hooks

“With reciprocity all things do not need to be equal in order for acceptance and mutuality to thrive. If equality is evoked…

— bell hooks

Since the notion that we should all forsake attachment to race and/or cultural identity and be “just humans” within the framework of…

— Bell Hooks

When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not…

— Bell Hooks

I was teasing my brother that he was penniless, homeless, jobless. Right now in his life, racism isn't the central highlighting force:…

— Bell Hooks

Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal…

— Bell Hooks

“Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals…

— bell hooks

“Often black people, especially non-gay folk, become enraged when they hear a white person who is gay suggest homosexuality is synonymous with…

— bell hooks

“But artists aren’t the only marginalized folks controlling real estate. Think about the colonizing role that wealthy white gay men have played…

— bell hooks

“In the early years of contemporary feminist movement, solidarity between women was often equated with the formation of "safe" spaces where groups…

— bell hooks

“The growing number of gated communities in our nation is but one example of the obsession with safety. With guards at the…

— Bell Hooks

“Within neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the black male body continues to be perceived as an embodiment of bestial, violent, penis-as-weapon hypermasculine…

— bell hooks

Whether we're talking about race or gender or class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is, it's where the learning is.

— Bell Hooks

The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in…

— Bell Hooks

To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

— Bell Hooks

It is crucial for the future of the Black liberation struggle that we remain ever mindful that ours is a shared struggle,…

— Bell Hooks

If we move away from either/or thinking, and if we think, okay, every day of my life that I walk out of…

— Bell Hooks

“The "we" evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that…

— bell hooks