Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

Bell Hooks

Categorized in : School White Teaching

The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.

freedom education moving

Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power - not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist.

badass life people

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

i-love-you love-is moving

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.

love way moving

I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive consumer...education as the practice of freedom.... education that connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place where paradise can be created.

paradise students practice

Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.

shame tools white

What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we b... by Bell Hooks

What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.

important believe

[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.

resistance community way

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.

differences meaningful moving

To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.

roots inspiring reality

My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them. Educating is a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know.

struggle teacher believe

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the pr... by Bell Hooks

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

privileged oppressed rage

The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politic... by Bell Hooks

The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.

powerful practice love-is

All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society-so that the way we live, teach, and work can reflect our joy in cultural diversity, our passion for justice, and our love of freedom.

passion educational justice

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

sisterhood race class

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

self-esteem successful men

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wantin... by Bell Hooks

True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.

resistance pain people

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.

community awareness way

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege.

beloved-community differences justice

I think our culture doesn't recognize passion, because real passion has the power to disrupt boundaries.

passion real thinking