Writing Beyond Race

Living Theory and Practice

bell hooks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136266034
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By "writing beyond race, " noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination.

In the spirit of previous classics like Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real, this new collection of compelling essays interrogates contemporary cultural notions of race, gender, and class. From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this "post-racial" era.

1Introduction

In recent years my work has focused on the role of love in ending domination. Contemplating the factors that lead people to struggle for justice and strive to build community has led me to think critically about the place of love. Whether the issue is ending racism, sexism, homophobia, or class elitism, when I interview folks about what leads them to overcome dominator thinking and action they invariably speak about love, about learning acceptance of difference from someone they care about. They talk about being rigorously challenged by the longing to connect and join with someone who is either radically different or holds beliefs and opinions so unlike their own as to be a source of estrangement and conflict, so much so that only sustained, caring, critical vigilance can ensure continued contact. For many of these individuals it is active involvement with movements to end domination that has pushed them in the direction of critical thinking and change.

When feminist theory and cultural criticism privileged ending domination, challenging all of us to move beyond the barriers created by race, gender, class, sexuality, and/or religious differences, for a time at least, it appeared that we would be entering a brave new world where differences could be understood and embraced, where we would all seek to learn from the “other,” whomever that other might be. All the theories of border crossing, of finding a way to “get a bit of the other,” did not fundamentally change the nature of dominator culture. Our theory was far more progressive and inclusive in its vision than our everyday life practice. In our everyday lives all of us confront barriers to communication—divisive hierarchies that make joining together difficult, if not impossible. Many of us found that it was easier to name the problem and to deconstruct it, and yet it was hard to create theories that would help us build community, help us border cross with the intention of truly remaining connected in a space of difference long enough to be transformed.

Public discourses about race and gender did create new ways of thinking and knowing. Talking about class and the various ways class differences separate groups has been much harder. Class standing and status tend frequently to link us more intimately to the dominant economic system and its concomitant hierarchies. For example: it is much more likely that a white person will bond with a black person when the two share a common class lifestyle. It is less likely that a materially prosperous person will establish a mutual bond with someone who is poor and indigent. One of the most difficult and delicate subjects to discuss among African Americans is the reality of class differences and of class difference among us. The central position race has occupied in our political discourse has often obscured the way in which class differences disrupt notions of racial unity. And yet, today, class differences coupled with racial integration have created a cultural context where the very meaning of blackness and its impact on our lives differs greatly among black people. There is no longer a common notion of shared black identity.

In other words, a sense of shared identity is no longer a platform that can draw folks together in meaningful solidarity. Along with class, gender issues and feminist awareness have served to place black folks in different camps, creating conflicts that can only be resolved through education for critical consciousness. There is also the reality of changing religious practices. There was a time in our nation when it was just assumed that every black person was a Christian or at least coming from a Christian background. This is simply no longer the case. Black children today have diverse religious practices. Some are raised in Muslim and Buddhist traditions with no understanding of Christian beliefs. And more young black people than ever before choose no religious practice at all. Hence the shared theological language that once served as a basis of communication and bonding can no longer be assumed.

Many of these changes to the nature of black identity are a direct consequence of racial integration. Prior to racial integration most educated black folks, especially those with higher degrees, were educated within a similar segregated pedagogical context and were more than likely to have a shared mindset. It is political movement that has allowed greater class mobility, making it possible for materially prosperous black folks to leave historically black communities and live elsewhere. The opening up of educational possibilities has led to the formation of classes of black individuals with radically different educational backgrounds, diverse perspectives and values, as well as varied political leanings. Consequently, bonding between black folks (even within families where there are not major class differences) has become more difficult.

Significantly, despite class differences, as a group, white people (whether consciously or unconsciously) maintain some degree of bonding despite diversities of standpoint. White supremacist thinking continues to be the invisible and visible glue that keeps white folks connected irrespective of many other differences. Politically, white supremacist thinking was created to serve this purpose. Imprinted on the consciousness of every white child at birth, reinforced by the culture, white supremacist thinking tends to function unconsciously. This is the primary reason it is so difficult to challenge and change.

In order to talk openly and honestly about race in the United States it is helpful to begin with the understanding that it is white supremacist thinking and practice that has been the political foundation undergirding all systems of domination based on skin color and ethnicity. When describing the political system that we live within here in the United States, more often than not, I use the complicated phrase imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. This phrase is useful precisely because it does not prioritize one system over another but rather offers us a way to think about the interlocking systems that work together to uphold and maintain cultures of domination.

However, in talking and writing about these systems for more than thirty years, I have found that most citizens of the United States resist the notion that ours is a nation founded and colonized on a foundation of white supremacist thought and action. And yet, as a nation we have always had a public discourse about race and racism. And, when leaders of our nation have called for a national dialogue on these issues, there has been little resistance. The United States was colonized and founded by a white supremacist politics that necessitated endless thinking, writing, and discussion about race. White folks from all places and classes, speaking all manner of languages, migrated here in the hopes of creating a better, more prosperous, freer life for themselves. They, for the most part, collectively, accepted a national identity based on the fictions of race and racism created by white supremacist thought and action. Bonding on the basis of shared whiteness provides the foundation for a sense of shared meaning, values, and purpose. With the battle cry of preserving whiteness, imperialist colonization became the belief system that supported the mass murder of indigenous natives, the blatant stealing of their lands, and the creation of segregated reservations. Despite the presence of African individuals who came to the so-called new world before Columbus—as documented in Ivan Van Sertima’s seminal work They Came Before Columbus—white supremacist thinking and action condoned the enslavement of black Africans, supporting their brutal exploitation and oppression.

Living as they did in close proximity with enslaved black folks, relying on them to serve obediently and subserviently, white dominators needed a psychological mode of colonization that would keep everyone in check, that would teach everyone their place in the race-based hierarchy that is the aim of white supremacist thinking and practice. At this point, notions of white supremacy were fluid and constantly changing to meet the needs of dominating white colonizers. When white supremacist logic decreed that all black folks were diseased and unclean, that train of thought then had to be shifted a bit to leave just enough room for it to be deemed acceptable for some black folks to cook for white owners and to care for their children. When white supremacist logic decreed that the brains of black folks were smaller than those of whites, thus rendering them intellectually inferior, and then well-educated black genius asserted itself, there had to be space made within the theory of white superiority for exceptions. Clearly, one of the awesome aspects of white supremacist logic has been its fluidity, its ability to adjust and change according to need and circumstance.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, dialogues about white supremacy were common. Few, if any, white folks would have found it odd for there to be silence on the subject. Ye t talk of white supremacy in our society is deemed not only taboo, but also irrelevant. When addressed openly there is always a listener eager to insist that the term white supremacy has little meaning in the contemporary United States, that it is too harsh a reality to be relevant to discussions of race and racism.

When I speak with audiences about imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the one piece of these interlocking political systems that individuals most resist acknowledging is white supremacy. And yet if we cannot as a culture accept the way white supremacist thinking and practice informs some aspect of our lives irrespective of skin color, then we will never move beyond race. Unlike race and racism, which does not overtly harm masses of folk in ways that causes direct damage, white supremacy is the covert ideology that is the silent cause of harm and trauma. Think of the black children, both rich and poor, who watch long hours of television that imprints their young minds with the notion that white is good and black is bad. All over the United States, parents who assume they have taught their families to be actively anti-racist are shocked when they discover that their children harbor intense anti-black feelings. This is just one example. Another example might be the interracial couple in which the white individual proclaims their undying love for a black partner but then later in conversation talks about their belief that black people are intellectually inferior. This is not an expression of conventional racial prejudice. It does however remind us that one can be intimate with black folks, claim even to love us, and yet still hold white supremacist attitudes about the nature of black identity.

Thinking about white supremacy as the foundation of race and racism is crucial because it allows us to see beyond skin color. It allows us to look at all the myriad ways our daily actions can be imbued by white supremacist thinking no matter our race. Certainly, race and racism will never become unimportant if we cannot recognize the need to consistently challenge white supremacy. When cultural studies emerged as a context where the issue of whiteness and white privilege could be studied and theorized, it appeared that a new way of thinking and talking about race was emerging. Even though scholars wrote much about white privilege, they did not always endeavor to show the link between underlying notions of white supremacy and white privilege. Overracializing whiteness then made it seem as though white skin and the privileges that it allows were the primary issues, and not the white supremacist ways of thinking and acting that are expressed by folks of all skin colors. It may very well be that the re-centering of whiteness has helped silence the necessary theories and practice that are needed if we are as a nation to truly learn how to be rid of racism.

Similarly, feminist focus on gender, which initially provided amazing insights into the nature of patriarchy and gave hope to those struggling to bring sexist exploitation and domination to an end, was soon usurped by a depoliticized focus on gender. We now have much published work that looks at race and gender but not from a standpoint that is feminist or anti-racist. This is a deeply disturbing trend. Among those of us who have spent our lifetimes critically thinking and writing about ways to transform both our individual lives and our society so that systems of domination can be challenged and changed, there is a growing mood of frustration and despair. We feel we are constantly deconstructing and laying the groundwork for alternatives without making the interventions in how folks live daily that are needed if our society is to be utterly changed.

Significantly, in the last ten years, there have been so many cutbacks at colleges and universities that the longed for diversity of faculty and staff not only is not happening, it is unlikely to ever happen. At many institutions, when jobs appear, conventional hierarchies of race and gender fall back into place. This reminds many critical thinkers of how important it is to encourage everyone to learn new points of view, to engage in unbiased thinking and teaching. The burden of learning new points of view should not have been placed solely on the shoulders of people of color. Intervention that helps us all better understand the way interlocking systems of domination work together is consistently needed.

The motley collection of essays in Writing Beyond Race all emerge from my efforts to look at the ways race, gender, and class are written and talked about today. After the feminist and cultural studies heyday, where for a time so much new ground was broken and radical discussions of non-biased standpoints were made prominent, these discourses are suddenly no longer at the forefront of our consciousness. While the subjects of race, gender, and class are still talked about, they are more and more divorced from discussions of ending biases in standpoint, and so they risk becoming mere topics of inquiry with no relation to transformative learning or practical change.

In these essays I focus attention on issues of accountability, standpoint, and white supremacy. Specifically, I examine those cultural productions which give the surface appearance of addressing topics of race, gender, and class, while merely reinscribing ideologies of domination. Not wanting to simply paint a bleak picture of where things stand, I address in several essays what allows us to bond across differences, placing emphasis on patterns of positive change. Most importantly, I am attempting to think and write beyond the boundaries which keep us all overracialized. To find a way to move beyond race is not only the goal of critical thinking, it is the only path to emotional longevity, the only true path to liberation.

2 Racism: Naming What Hurts

At a time in our nation when more folk than ever before are daring to “talk” race, many of us who have been speaking and writing on the subject for years are oddly silent. Some of us do not want to be heard sharing that they “are sick and tired of talking about race.” Still other folks wonder what good does all the talking do when so much remains the same, when our nation’s acceptable discourses of race are inextricably tied to the normalized practices of racism and white supremacy. Contrary to the popular assumption that folks find it difficult to talk about race, the truth of the matter is that most folks talk about race all the time, that one of the ways everyday racism has made its imprint on the lives of black people/ people of color has been through the many overheard comments that are overt expressions of hate speech. All around us, negative stereotypes can be heard, overt racist epitaphs abound. The election of a black male president has simply brought these stereotypes out of the closet and made them more public. Making racist comments has become more acceptable for everyone, especially when those comments occur in an atmosphere where all around us we hear that racism no longer exists.

When folks insist that racism is gone, what they usually mean is that black people/people of color have gained enough civil rights through antidiscrimination laws and practices that we are no longer subjected to constant racial terrorism or overt brutal punishments based on race. The great paradox of our nation’s relationship to race is that if you were to go door to door and ask every white person if racial prejudice is still a problem most folks would say yes. Then if you were to ask them if this prejudice adversely effects black folks more than other groups, most folks would probably say no. And if the conversation continued, they may even proclaim that there is very little anti-black prejudice. It is not that your average white American citizens do not understand that racism is alive and well, it is simply that they believe it is no longer a meaningful threat to anyone’s well-being. Along with this sentiment (which is not based on facts or study), a huge majority of white folks simply believe that black folks have received unearned gains and rewards and that this perceived reality of being given many breaks evens the score and cancels out any racial injustice past and present. Indeed, how often across class boundaries do individual black folk hear from other groups, especially white folks, say that “they are sick and tired of hearing black folks complain about racism, that they can’t stand the whining, that black folks are their own worst enemies.”

Imagine a scenario where you are the lone black female working in a predominately white office, and at meetings and at lunch your colleagues talk about and joke about lazy “niggahs.” When you go to the boss and talk about diversity training, about the need for everyone to understand hate speech, you are told you are misreading the situation, that you are being too sensitive, that folks are just having fun. No one listens when you tell them that when folks say the “n” word in a context where they are not being actively anti-racist that it triggers memories of trauma and fear. Time and time again you confront them and even when they admit that they can understand why you do not find it amusing, they tell you they are talking about the “bad” black people when they make racist comments, “not good black people.” Again and again they assure you they mean no harm. This scenario is a common one experienced probably by every black person/person of color who has or is working in an a work space where few, if any, white workers have unlearned racism.

When these incidents happen to all people of color and especially black people, it simply reinforces our conviction that we can never be free of racism, that we are never safe. Unaware white folks who have not chosen to unlearn racism, who in most areas of their lives are generally decent and well-intentioned, have no idea the extent to which black people, across class, live with constant anxiety and/or fear that we will be the innocent targets of random racist assault. Of course, the white folks who are openly committed to maintaining white supremacism at all costs boast of their efforts to humiliate, shame, and terrorize every person of color they encounter. Nowadays, many black people/people of color have accepted that living with racism is just an unchanging fact of life. But, by passively accepting racism and believing it cannot be changed, we unwittingly collude with all the unenlightened racist white folks who embrace white supremacist thought and action.

Again and again visionary thinkers on the subject of race encourage us to confront directly and honestly the way in which white supremacist ideology informs the lives of everyone in our nation to a greater or lesser degree. We can move beyond the us/them binaries that usually surface in most discussions of race and racism if we focus on the ways in which white supremacist thought is a foundational belief system in this nation. White supremacist thinking informs the consciousness of everyone irrespective of skin color.

In more recent years cultural critics focusing on color caste hierarchies among black people/people of color, which deem fairer skinned people to be more beautiful than their darker skinned counterparts, remind everyone that this way of thinking and acting is a startling indication of how deeply engrained white supremacist aesthetics constantly shape identity and behavior. No white dominating authority has to be present for these practices of white supremacy to impinge on the lives of black people. In the daily lives of black folk/p...