The quest to know what is not 'us' and to know the 'other' she implies, is endemic to all societies (hooks 32). Yet the academy has shown scant interest in how blacks perceive whiteness, only how whites perceive blackness. This renders white people and whiteness invisible as an ideological construct and renders black people invisible as human beings.
Instead, black people are merely reduced to serving bodies, as hardly human, as something for whites to use as reflections to see what they are 'not,' rather than as legitimate subjects with a perspective of their own. This recalls how the first native people were classified, almost as animal subjects, in the first encounters of Europeans with the New World, and discovered as objects or primitive representations of what European culture had 'evolved' into (Omni & Winant 61).
With some humor, hooks records some of the stereotypes that blacks have spoken of in regards to whites, as noted by Lorraine Hansberry in her work to be Young, Gifted, and Black -- for example, in a rather understandable comment by black women who have cleaned the homes of white women to be economically viable, the women note that whites are "dirty," as well as passionless and cold. Hooks records these stereotypes not to endorse them, but merely to note that as the individuals on opposite sides of the artificially constructed color line gaze at one another, in printed material other than a few black authors like Hansberry, only the white gaze is studied, analyzed, and privileged (hooks 31).
A hooks' criticism seems apt in the sense that 'whiteness' as a construct, much like 'heterosexuality' and 'maleness' has only recently been problematized within contemporary academic discourse. But hooks' use of the term as the opposite of blackness, in reference to individuals is itself problematic. What about racial categories of white people who only 'recently' became white, such as people of Irish, Italian,...
Bell hooks' "Seeing and Making Culture" bell hooks successfully challenges stereotypes specific to poverty by writing to two separate audiences using ethos, pathos and vocabulary common enough for most people, yet elegant enough for academics. In her essay, "Seeing and Making Culture," hooks uses an ethos way of writing when she uses quotes throughout the text. In addition, hooks also uses pathos by appealing to our emotions with the interactions between
(pp.45-58) Hooks also recognized that when integration occurred these change agents were alienated from black children and alienation and discrimination ensued, associated with being taught white history and democratic ideals, rather than reformation of education, which was the intention. (p. 3) Both perspective childhood stories imply implicit as well as environmental (explicit) characteristics of wisdom, as Hooks acknowledges that she may have been singled out, as a child of a
Playing in the Dark & Art on my Mind Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination and Bell Hooks' Art on My Mind: Visual Politics are both works of nonfiction that center on the idea of cultural identity and its politics related to art and literature. Hooks is, of course, a forerunner in the critique of African-American culture and Art on My Mind closely examines the world
Gender and Sexuality Define sex. The term sex means those characteristics, biological as well as physiological, that define men and women. Sex is better defined by categorizing sexes such as make and females. Major characteristic of sex is that its aspects do not considerably change within different societies. To further explain, specific sex related examples are that women menstruate and have breasts developed capable of lactation. Such characteristics are absent in male
Women's Oppression, Racism, Colonialism And Feminism "The Committee is concerned that women's access to justice is limited, in particular because of women's lack of information on their rights, lack of legal aid, the insufficient understanding of the convention by the judiciary and the lengthy legal processes which are not understood by women. The Committee is concerned that physical and psychological violence cases are particularly difficult to be prosecuted in the legal
The lack of a critical analysis of race created a divide between feminist and black activists, as chronicled in the words of feminist and scholar Beverley Guy-Sheftall: "Coming out of the Civil Rights era, black feminism was a contentious, debatable, demonized and divisive notion. It was perceived to be a pro-white, anti-male doctrine that would destroy black families and prohibit unity. I can remember going to all-black gatherings and people
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