Bell Hooks Quotes About Oppression

Quotes about: Oppression

• The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

  Bell Hooks

  Love, Moving, Way

  Bell Hooks (1994). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.298, Routledge

• Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.

  Bell Hooks

  Strong, Confused, Reality

  bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.6, Routledge

• Feminist effort to end patriarchal domination should be of primary concern precisely because it insists on the eradication of exploitation and oppression in the family context and in all other intimate relationships. It is that political movement which most radically addresses the person – the personal – citing the need for the transformation of self, of relationships, so that we might be better able to act in a revolutionary manner, challenging and resisting domination, transforming the world outside the self.

  Bell Hooks

  Intimate Relationships, Self, Feminist

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.34, Routledge

• When liberal whites fail to understand how they can and/or do embody white supremacist values and beliefs even though they may not embrace racism as prejudice or domination (especially domination that involves coercive control), they cannot recognize the ways their actions support and affirm the very structure of racist domination and oppression that they wish to see eradicated.

  Bell Hooks

  White, Racism, Support

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.125, Routledge

• Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

  Bell Hooks

  Feminism, Movement, Oppression

  "Feminism Is for Everybody". Book by Bell Hooks, 2000.

• White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or ... and oppression of others.

  Bell Hooks

  Men, White, Black

• Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform meaningfully all our lives

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Men, Race

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.45, Routledge

• It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

  Bell Hooks

  White, People, Focus

  "Ain't I a Woman?". Book by Gloria Jean Watkins, 1981.

• The struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Fighting, Racism

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.57, Routledge

• ... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, orwe are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.

  Bell Hooks

  Commitment, Space, Feminist

  bell hooks (2012). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.78, Routledge

• Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.

  Bell Hooks

  Taken, Class, African American

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.7, Routledge

• A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women.

  Bell Hooks

  Race, Class, Diversity

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.5, Routledge

• What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.

  Bell Hooks

  People, Goal, Black

  bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.5, Routledge

• Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.

  Bell Hooks

  Feminism, Majority, Oppression

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.18, Routledge

• . . .there is an element of Play that is almost ritualistic in Black folk life. It serves to mediate the tensions, stress, and pain of constant exploitation and oppression.

  Bell Hooks

  Pain, Stress, Play

  bell hooks, Cornel West (2016). “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life”, p.110, Routledge

• Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels.

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Feminism, Western Culture

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.26, Routledge

• Within the new self-help books for women, patriarachy and male domination are rarely identified as forces that lead to the oppression, exploitation, and domination of women. Instead, these books suggest that individual relationships between men and women can be changed solely by women making the right choices.

  Bell Hooks

  Book, Men, Self

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.45, Routledge

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