Bell Hooks Quotes

We cannot be liberated as women in a society built on class oppression or gender oppression or religious oppression.

There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions

Woke ideology is a form of cultural Marxism.

Dividing groups of people into categories of oppressed and oppressor is a poisonous way to conduct politics in a liberal multiethnic republic. But it’s precisely the way the progressive vanguard believes politics must be conducted to achieve social justice.

We'll always be re-examining how we relate to each other in terms of race and gender, in terms of power and access.

If we don't center the voices of marginalized people, we're doing the wrong work.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

When folks say 'identity politics' don't matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don't share that identity.

I do think that fist-waving conversations around liberation ideologies are sort of dated - I'm not creating Barbara Kruger moments of self-actualization - what I'm trying to do is create more moments of chaos where we don't really know where we are: to destabilize; where all the rules are suspended temporarily.

The better we understand how identities and power work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

In the South, people in power feel they don't have to answer to no one.

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.

Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so, obviously, it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don't ourselves experience.

This idea of, oh, poor little black person, oh, poor little poor person, oh, poor little woman, oh, poor little indigenous person - everybody's a poor little something! I don't try and please everybody.

An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor.

What would it mean if we lived in a world in which no one held out for the possibility of substantial political equality, or for a full cessation of colonial practices - if no one held out for those things because they were impossible?

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk.

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.

Controlling women as the means of reproduction is made even more necessary by any race or caste or class system. It just comes together, it's just like life. And therefore it's not even practical to be a feminist without being anti-racist or against classism. It just doesn't work.

Feminism involves so much more than gender equality and it involves so much more than gender. Feminism must involve consciousness of capitalism (I mean the feminism that I relate to, and there are multiple feminisms, right). So it has to involve a consciousness of capitalism and racism and colonialism and post-colonialities, and ability and more genders than we can even imagine and more sexualities than we ever thought we could name.

The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.

Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility.

... anything a powerful group has is perceived as good, no matter what it is, and anything a less powerful group has is not so good, no matter how intrinsically great it might be.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?