MADE OF SHADE: Dr. bell hooks on Zimmerman Effect
Exclusive interview with respected author ...
By Quassan Castro
Not every day do you get to sit with intellectual, feminist, educator and social activist bell hooks.
If you do, it’s wise to fall silent and listen.
bell hooks has written and published over thirty books, including
Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism;
Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics; Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery;
Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom;
Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-esteem;
We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity and many more works to date.
bell
hooks was a Professor of African and African-American Studies and
English at Yale University. hooks was the Distinguished Lecturer of
English Literature at City College of New York. She was also Associate
Professor of Women’s Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College.
hooks has been ranked as one of the most influential American
thinkers and writers of all time by Publisher’s Weekly and The Atlantic
monthly. In this week’s
Made of Shade column, hooks joins me to
discuss Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman, B37 Juror, the bell hooks Institute
and the new Rolling Stone cover featuring the marathon bomber.
Quassan: I was sick to my stomach when I watched Zimmerman
become a free man. We’ve had this sort of injustice take place in the
past, yet on that particular day, from the pit of my stomach, I felt
terribly ill. How did we arrive to this point where something so unjust
could take place over and over again?
bell hooks: White supremacy has not only not changed its direction,
it’s intensified as black people and other people of color have gained
rights and have proved ourselves to be equal. In many ways the Zimmerman
case is really a modern day lynching, it’s about racist white people
reinforcing racialized power. The outcome sends a message to the world
that global white supremacy is alive and well.
Quassan: What are some of the solutions to these injustices that keep arising in our community and around the world?
bell hooks: We can’t combat white supremacy unless we can teach
people to love justice. You have to love justice more than your
allegiance to your race, sexuality and gender. It is about justice.
That’s why Dr. King was so vital because he used the transformative
power of love as a force for justice.
Quassan: Wow! African American parents are mortified for the
safety of their children as they leave the house into a world that has
shown it devalues blackness but also a system exists that does not
protect our beloved children. What should these parents say to their
children?
bell hooks: First of all black children in this country have never
been safe. I think it’s really important that we remember the
four little black girls
killed in Birmingham and realize that’s where the type of white
supremacist, terrorist assault began. That killing sent a message to
black people that our children are not safe. I think we have to be
careful not to act like this is some kind of new world that’s been
created but that this is the world we already existed in. I think we
should honor the fact that people do amazing parenting of black children
in the midst of white supremacist culture. Partially, it is by creating
awareness and creating an activist mentally in children at a very early
age. When we lived in the time of
separate but [not] equal or
coloreds only,
black parents had to explain the reality to children who did not
understand what was taking place. The work of parenting for justice,
black parents have always done. Many white people have much to learn
from progressive black people about how to parent for justice. I was
just talking with a friend about a little black boy in Kentucky who was
being told that the other kids didn’t want to play with him or touch him
because he was black. When parents parent for justice, a child knows
how to respond. The boy knew how to deal with the situation; he knew
they were being ridiculous. That is what conscious parenting is all
about.
Quassan: What would you say to Zimmerman if you were able to speak to him face to face?
bell hooks: That’s a difficult question because I believe that he’s
such a hater that it’s impossible to speak to him through the wall of
hate. Just think, if Zimmerman had never gotten out the car, Trayvon
would be alive today. Trayvon was no threat to Zimmerman. A lot of hate
had to be inside of Zimmerman, to get him out of the car, stalk Trayvon
and execute him. It’s impossible to answer that. Really we can only be
similar to the Amish and ask for forgiveness of his sins. Some black
people might feel the urge to stalk Zimmerman and execute him. I think
that’s a real shift in many people’s response to racialized aggression,
it has to do with the feeling of powerlessness in the face of justice
not prevailing.
Quassan: Why should Stand your ground NOT exist?
bell hooks: Let’s go back to the co-murderers of Trayvon Martin
because they are the white people in Tallahassee who are so obsessively
supportive of
stand your ground. It is that law that gives the
license to kill and that encourages white people to become predators of
people of color. We have to look even before
stand your ground,
white people have always used private property signs and trespassing
signs as a way to kill people who are not like themselves.
Florida has
been the site of this madness, like the Asian who was just looking for
directions and was blown away by the white man who answered his door. It
was a
no trespassing sign, so he was not seen as a murderer.
Everybody is saying the decision for Zimmerman was all about the law and
we are a country of the law. Well the laws in this country have always
been anti-black people and people of color. It’s yet another white
supremacist attempt at mind distortion like suddenly we have a pure law
on behalf of justice when everyone knows that’s not so.
Quassan; Juror B37 said that Travon Martin played a role in
his death to Anderson Cooper during an exclusive interview. How do you
respond to her statement?
bell hooks: You know what’s amazing about Trayvon Martin is that he
was behaving like any teenager in our society would behave in a normal
teenage way. To say that he played a role in his death, is to not
acknowledge the amazing fact that despite imperialist white supremacist
capitalist patriarchy, Trayvon was just being a regular teenager causing
harm to no-one. People who want to believe that he played a role in his
death are the same people that want to believe that black children are
mini-adults. As if they are threats to the power of whiteness.
Quassan: What is the bell hooks Institute all about?
bell hooks: It’s all about bringing education for critical
consciousness into the lives of ordinary people. The institute first
hosted Gloria Steinem. Gloria traveled to Kentucky and spent the
afternoon with women of Kentucky who would never have the chance to talk
with her. The Institute mixes academic intellectual people with people
who are also critical thinkers and live ordinary lives. We had Cornel
West visit the Institute and it was just amazing and fabulous to have a
mixture of class and race of people, able to talk to him openly. Our
last guest was Rick Lowe from Texas who is responsible for
project row houses.
The institute is an amazing attempt to have education for critical
consciousness be something that touches race, class and gender. It’s
about sharing knowledge outside of institutions, for everyday people
that might not attend universities.
Quassan: What direction will the bell hooks Institute go in the future?
bell hooks: Right now it’s kind of a center that hosts events. But I
will house bell hooks papers and people who want to do work with my
writing, primary text or my work that is not published, will come and do
that work. They will be able to see bell hooks development as a
critical thinker and intellectual. I had a hard time coming to think
about a
bell hooks Institute because I’ve mostly been pretty
modest in my career. The forming of the Institute has so much to do with
the way in which critical thinkers and writers are being forgotten.
Some students come into my class and they don’t know who Audre Lorde is
or Toni Cade Bambara. The only black writer they know is Alice Walker.
It’s important for us to do the work of keeping our legacies and work
alive in the public imagination.
Quassan: Some people are outraged about the cover of Rolling
Stone Magazine where the marathon bomber is presented as this sort of
cool young guy in a rock star type of presentation. The title reads,
“Jahar’s World.” His long hair is blowing and appears fashionably
tweaked. He literally looks like some type of pop icon. Thoughts on the
cover?
bell hooks: This type of cover is meant to create a recognition that
makes so many criminalized people into celebrities. So he’s already
being
celebritized so that he can become a fashion statement or
style person. It’s what happens in our culture then the victims become
invisible. After, we cannot call up the victims’ looks or identity,
that’s part of this insanity in our culture of violence. We perpetuate
and normalize violence.
Quassan Castro is a news and entertainment journalist. Follow him on Twitter @Quassan.
View article as it appears via Jet Magazine.
http://jetmag.com/life/made-of-shade/bell-hooks/
