Professor hooks Lord Saunders Audience
by Alec Scott

Two weeks after an African American won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the first time, intellectual and scholar bell hooks spoke to a diverse audience of Oberlin students, faculty, and staff in Lord Lounge. hook’s Wednesday evening presentation, an hour of question and answer, “More on Love: A Conversation with bell hooks” focused on the use of feminist-based love as a method for achieving spiritual liberation in a “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Formerly an Oberlin College professor, hooks currently teaches at City College in New York City and has written over 13 books.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about love,” hooks said, opening her talk with a reading from her latest book, Feminism is for Everybody, “Feminist politics is a choice to love.” The author spoke in great detail about the phenomena of love being gender-classified as a woman’s thing, and the need for both men and women to reclaim the emotion.
Professor hooks then talked about a passage from Feminism is for Everybody, that references the recent Charlie’s Angels remake, commenting on the film’s portrayal of women as having to be beautiful, brilliant, but stupid in matters of the heart.
Upon opening for questions, sophomore Aaliyah Bilal asked hooks for strategies in developing self-confidence in the struggle to become politicized. hooks empathized with the dilemma, speaking of mainstream media outlets, such as television and film, as tools of society which make it impossible for women and people of color to love themselves fully. hooks urged students to turn off the media and open themselves up to more life affirming outlets of communication.
“Certain things you don’t want to take in,” hooks stated. “If you think about all the sex we’re fed, it’s a wonder we don’t think about it all the time.”
The next question prompted the author to speak about the need for conscious people to be relentless in the pursuit of their objectives. The author commented that the award-winning Halle Berry film, Monster’s Ball exemplified many American stereotypes, characterizing the black characters as flat and pornographic. The author stated that Hollywood serves as the best propaganda institution for reinforcing the white supremacist power structure in America.
“The first black person to win an Oscar was a maid,” hooks said, “The second person was a ho. We moved from mammy to ho!”
After an explosion of applause and laughter on that point, hooks tackled a question on the principles of feminism. The author described feminism as a movement based upon the desire to end sexism, and sexist exploitation and oppression. She urged students to “get out of the box,” and not base the movement upon a single gender or race.
Senior Vivian Ip asked hooks what her favorite movies were. The author described Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as groundbreaking in its ability to draw mainstream society into theaters across a language barrier. She credited the popular movie for getting a mainstream audience to sit through three hours of subtitles.
Another question cited hooks’ essay, All About Love, in which the author examined familial love. hooks then talked about the difference between care and love. She defined love as marked by commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust. She described her own childhood as emotionally and physically abusive and that she felt her intellectual gifts went unnoticed. “Show love in actions,” hooks said.
The conversation then moved to the subject of the appropriation of Third World culture. Professor hooks argued that appropriation was not all bad. She stated that the most important consideration in determining the merits of an act of appropriation is the objective of the usage. She cited the illegal downloading of music on-line as just appropriation.
“I had never heard it spoken of as anything but negative. A lot of Obies feel that they’re copying or taking something that’s not theirs to take. But that hinders a lot of possible collaboration,” first-year Althea Lazzaro said.
Inter-racial dating was the next topic of conversation. Professor hooks first and foremost argued that love is hard to come by, so everyone must find it where they can. She did, however, express her sentiments that people of color cannot find true love in unconscious white men and women.
“All kinds of things shape desire,” she said, “consider desire in complex ways. People can make political choices about who they want to love.”
hooks then discussed the recent trend of white female attraction to dredlocks on black men, highlighting the submission of both parties to white supremacist exotification of an Afro-centric tradition.
First-year Jyoti Bhatt next asked hooks for suggestions on forming alliances with conscious women outside of Oberlin. The author talked about the need for racial openness to exist and for small steps to be taken in one’s immediate setting.
“She was great. She was saying the way to create solidarity between women is to look in the mirror and work on an individual, local scale. You can’t build a revolution overnight,” Bhatt said.
Imagination was hooks’ final subject of reflection. She noted the ability of a Holocaust survivor to withstand concentration camp horrors by imaging the mutual love he held with his wife. hooks likened this miracle to her own ability to look beyond the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” of her youth, and urge her grandmother to make her a brown-skinned Barbie doll. The author recommended that students shift their focus away from deconstructing and instead focus on creating something liberating within the space.
“I felt enlightened. She seemed very down to earth. I liked her presentation style. She was able to reach a lot of people,” first-year Morgan Shelton said.

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