“In the southern world of racial apartheid” is how Hook begins chapter 10 of Class Matters. Again she chooses the most charged terms possible to radicalize her conversations. This chapter focuses on poor whites vs. blacks. Poor whites, some of which are known as “white trash,” had an advantage in being able to lord it … Continue reading White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility
Category: Gonzaga University
Feminism and Class Power
Hooks opens up chapter nine of Class Matters by discussing the two forms of Feminism. The reformist model of liberation demands equal rights for women without changing the current class struggle. Revolutionary feminism seeks fundamental change in the existing structures. And just as the “militant black liberation” struggle lost its appeal to ending classism once … Continue reading Feminism and Class Power
Class and Race: The New Black Elite
Bell starts Chapter 8 of Class Matters talking about the suppression of historical scholarship on the contributions of African explorers, and the fact that most blacks trace their history in American to slavery while whites trace themselves to journeys of the privileged. Apparently the quintessential example of American colonizers – the pilgrims fleeing religious oppression … Continue reading Class and Race: The New Black Elite
The Me-Me Class: The Young and the Ruthless
I have finally figured out what has been nagging me about Bell Hooks. I am reading her book for a master’s level class on Intercultural and International communications. I was expecting this to be another well-researched book by an expert in the field. But it isn’t. Hooks isn’t an expert. She is a writer and … Continue reading The Me-Me Class: The Young and the Ruthless
Being Rich — An ad hominem argument
Even though citizens of this nation like to insist that the United States is a classless society, we all know that the rich live apart from the rest of us and that they live differently. hooks, bell (2012-10-02). Where We Stand: Class Matters (p. 70). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. This quote is probably the … Continue reading Being Rich — An ad hominem argument
The Politics of Greed
In Chapter 5, “The Politics of Greed”, Hooks gets her hook into an idea and gets so much of it backward. She has a real confusion about causality. There are so many things she says that I can see obvious connections. But she connects and plugs them in backward. She begins by making a good … Continue reading The Politics of Greed
Money Hungry
Hook begins chapter for of Class Matters discussing what it feels like to want things when there is no money to spare. This can be from actually being poor, or from “dominating males” in “patriarchal households” that withhold funds as a means of exercising “coercive control” over the wife and kids. She uses her father … Continue reading Money Hungry
Class and the Politics of Living Simply
The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is … Continue reading Class and the Politics of Living Simply
Coming to Class Consciousness
In chapter 2 of Class Matters the author discusses the issue of various desires. Whenever she would desire something she couldn’t have, her mother would never admit it was a lack of money. Instead it became something only someone stupid who didn’t care about themselves would want. She learned to squelch desires and fantasies to gain … Continue reading Coming to Class Consciousness
Making the Personal Political: Class in the Family
The author of class matters starts her book out with an autobiographical chapter that could be a really entertaining story – if it didn’t turn into a sermon all the time. This chapter starts out with a description of the first house she remembers living in with her family – A rental block house with … Continue reading Making the Personal Political: Class in the Family
At The Rainbow 