Read Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) Online
Authors: Bell Hooks
| R/SP: | Well, in a way blacks and other people of color become the disembodied shadows of the power structure; they symbolize the guilt the power structure can’t acknowledge that is then projected on to them as fear. |
| bh: | And I think it’s really dangerous for us if we internalize those projections, because it means (and I think this has particularly been the case for black men) that we then shut off those areas of vulnerability in ourselves. It’s a kind of defense to imitate those who have wounded you, because, to the degree that you become them, you imagine you are safe. (Or rather, to the degree that you become the way they say you should be, you imagine you are safe.) So I try to talk about the process of “assimilation” as a kind of mask, as an amulet almost whereby you feel, “I can ward off the evil of this by becoming it, or by appearing to be it.” It’s a kind of camouflage. |
| R/SP: | Can you give us an example? |
| bh: | When I enter a room where other black people are present, I might want to speak to another black person and acknowledge them—and that person might look away as if to say, “Don’t think that just because we’re black we have something in common.” To some extent that person has decided to imitate the behavior of the larger white culture that says, “Color is not important … don’t use that as a basis for bonding.” And the fact is: the person may imagine that by adopting that behavior they’re safer, they’re more part of the group … when in fact we know that they’re not necessarily safe, and that their safety might actually come from bonding with the other person of color. I think the same can be said of women who enter spheres of power, and who feel, “It’s important for me never to show bonding or allegiance to another woman, because that will show I’m weak.” Whereas the irony is: we’re more strengthened when we can show the self-love expressed through bonding with those who are like ourselves. |
| R/SP: | It’s always threatening to the male power structure when women get together and are friends. |
| bh: | And I think right now we’re at a historical moment when we all have to talk about “How can I be bonded with other black people in a way that is not constructed to be oppressive or exclusionary to other people?” I think that this can be viewed as a magical moment: “What does it mean to try to affirm someone, without excluding somebody else?” I gave a talk at Barnard College in front of a large audience, and a black woman who came in late seemed somewhat distressed. I wanted to reach out to her and say, “Hey, you’re really welcome here, I’m glad to see you!” (And I always think, “How do you do that in such a way that you don’t make other people feel that somehow her presence is more important than anybody else’s?” Because it isn’t—all the presences are important. So I always try to give off a real aura of warmth and welcome to everyone.) When she came in, I walked over and stuck out my hand to her and … I got this sweet letter from her saying that this action meant so much to her: “I was stunned by the spontaneous lovingness of the gesture you made toward me. It will take some time before I fully internalize the lessons of relatedness and sisterhood it showed me.” Part of what I try to express in my work is that racism, sexism, homophobia, and all these things really wound us in a profound way. Practically everybody acknowledges that incest is wounding to the victim, but people don’t want to acknowledge that racism and sexism are wounding in ways that make it equally hard to function as a Self in everyday life. And … something like having a person reach out to you with warmth can just be healing … |
| R/SP: | I think a lot of people need integrating philosophies now. Things are so alienated, fascistic, and polarized—it’s very sad that we’re all sort of “Displaced Others” … Everyone who really wants to change the world needs so much to be bonded together with our differences, instead of separated. |
| bh: | That was one of the ideas I tried to express when I chose Yearning as a book title. At dinner last night when I looked around me across differences, I wondered, “What is uniting us?” All of us across our different experiences were expressing this longing, this deep and profound yearning, to just have this domination end. And what I feel unites you and me is: we can locate in one another a similar yearning to be in a more just world. So I tried to evoke the idea that if we could come together in that site of desire and longing, it might be a potential place of community-building. Rather than thinking we would come together as “women” in an identity-based bonding we might be drawn together rather by a commonality of feeling. I think that’s a real challenge for us now: to think about constructing community on different bases. Eunice Lipton, a woman art historian, said, “What would it mean for us to look at biography not from the standpoint of people’s accomplishments, but from what people desired.” I thought, “Wow, what a different way to conceptualize life and the value of life.” Again, this goes away from the imperialist model where you’re thinking of life in terms of “who or what you have conquered?” toward: “what you have actualized within yourself?” So her question concerned: “What if biography were to tell about desire, not achievement—then how would we tell a woman’s life?” I think that’s really powerful. |
| R/SP: | Our identities are so constructed that you hit a brick wall if you attempt to say what women “are,” because one can always think of exceptions. All constructed identities such as “Black” or “Chicano” are sort of negative identities against the world of white WASP “ideals.” For many women, what bonds us is: what is against us. |
| bh: | Right, and that’s not enough to build community upon— one has to build community on much deeper bases than “in reaction to.” You heard about the Korean woman shopkeeper and the young black woman she murdered? In Los Angeles, this woman came into the store, took some juice and put it in her backpack, then held out the money to pay for it and was shot to death by the shopkeeper (who claimed she was being attacked). But when the video was replayed, people could see clearly that she was not being attacked. And this can become the way relations between Korean/Asian women and black women are projected. Those of us who have had very different kinds of relations (where we’ve learned about one another’s cultures) haven’t been vocal enough to propagate a representation that counters this—so that we see it for the individual moment of madness it is, rather than a representation of black/Asian relations. When Vietnamese filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha and I come together in love and solidarity, it’s usually in private spaces—in our houses, where we talk about what we share, the cultures we come from and ways they intersect. And one challenge I put forth is: it’s no longer enough for us to do that—we need to also come out of those houses and name our solidarities publicly with one another. I became fascinated by how a lot of the stereotypes for Asian women (“passive,” “nonassertive,” “quiet”) are just the opposite of the stereotypes that plague black women (“aggressive,” “loud,” “mean”). It’s like we exist in two radically different poles in the economy of racism. And it’s those positionings that make it hard for Asian women and black women to come together … but I think we have to be more public in naming the ways that we dare to cross those boundaries and come together. |
| R/SP: | Right. Wanda Coleman said that when she goes to a party and is the only black woman there, suddenly she has the burden of being the “representative of black culture,” particularly with well-meaning “liberal” types, and that this was exhausting—she just wanted to have a good time! |
| bh: | Right. You may think of race as just one facet of “who they are,” but that facet doesn’t mean they inherently know the “collectivity”! I went to a dinner party where a young white woman who seemed to be an admirer of my work wanted to sit next to me … but immediately she said, “I’m having problems with my black woman roommate, and I just wanted to know if you could tell me why she’s behaving this way.” I replied, “You know, if you wanted to know about Buddhism, would you grab the first Buddhist priest you met and say, ‘Really tell me all about it in the space of a half hour’?” I think that often when it comes to race or meaning across difference, people just lose their rational capacity to know how to approach something—I think a lot of white people give up their power of knowing. As soon as I said that to this young woman, she knew she should learn more about black culture and black history herself—not think she should go to some other black person to solve this problem. I asked her, “Why would I understand this situation better than you, when you’re in it?” But on her part there was this whole sense of: “As a white woman, I couldn’t possibly understand what a black woman is going through,” when in fact (as Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says) understanding comes through our capacity to empty out the self and identify with that person whom we normally make the Other. In other words, the moment we are willing to give up our own ego and draw in the being and presence of someone else, we’re no longer “Other-ing” them, because we are saying there’s no space they inhabit that cannot be a space we can connect with. |
| R/SP: | These days relationships are so superficial, clichéd, and stereotyped … but if anyone really talks to somebody, after ten minutes one forgets or loses one’s self in that other person’s emotions. |
| bh: | When people ask, “How do we deal with difference?” I always refer them back to what it means to fall in love, because most of us have had an experience of desire and loving. I often say to people, “What do you do when you meet somebody and are attracted to them? How do you go about making that communication? Why do you think that wanting to know someone who’s ‘racially’ different doesn’t have a similar procedure?” It’s like if I saw you on the street and thought you were cute, and I happened to know someone who knew you, I might say to that person, “Oh wow, I think so-and-so’s cute. What do you know about them?” I think that often the empowering strategies we use in the arena of love and friendship are immediately dropped when we come into the arena of politicized difference—when in fact some of those strategies are useful and necessary. I mean, how many of us run up to somebody we are attracted to and say, breathlessly, “Tell me all about yourself right away.” We usually try to feel out the situation. We don’t want to alienate that person: we want to approach them in a manner that allows them to be open to us … giving to us. I think it’s interesting that often when difference is there (like a racial difference or something), people panic and do crazy, bizarre things … or say crazy, stupid things. |
| R/SP: | Within any politicized group that is formulating a platform for social change (claiming “gayness” or “political correctness”), well, what does that really mean? For example, if you’re in ACT UP, you can have less in common with a Republican gay than with a “straight” political anarchist. |
| bh: | Absolutely. I said something similar about the film Paris Is Burning: even though the subject matter appears “radical,” it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s radical. Just to portray marginalized black gay sub-culture is not necessarily to be giving a portrait of subversion and oppositional life. One has to question more deeply what authentic terms of opposition might mean for any of us in our lives. |
| R/SP: | Particularly in this society which has appropriated all the forms of rebellion … where you have Lee Atwater playing the blues. |
| bh: | Absolutely. My friend Carol Gregory made a video of Lee Atwater which contrasts him talking about how much he loved black music, with examples of the political racism he generated. The separation was so intense … |
| R/SP: | He fomented the most flagrant racism. |
| bh: | Yes. She said, “This is what’s so tragic … that he was not able to allow his fascination with black music to alter his perceptions of race.” This also reminds us how easily we can appropriate and commodify an aspect of a people’s culture without allowing any personal transformation to take place—I mean, he was not transformed by his involvement in black music! A lot of what’s happening now with Madonna and black culture is also raising those kinds of questions. |
| R/SP: | When I saw Lee Atwater with Chuck Berry, there was such an implied colonialism—a certain “slumming” quality as he was “playing the blues” with these black musicians. You felt that the power structure had not been breached whatsoever. |
| bh: | And yet, when I read recently of his death from a brain tumor, I kept wondering to what extent his inhabiting the schizophrenic positionality had affected his physiological well-being. |
| R/SP: | When he found out he had brain cancer, apparently he had a genuine realization that he was going to die, and tried to apologize to all the people he had hurt. |
| bh: | One of the myths of racism in this society and patriarchy is: “Those who oppress, do not suffer in any way.” Yet, if we just look closely, we see that this—the most materially luxurious country on the planet—is beset by all forms of disease and ill health. This in itself is such an interrogation of the price people have had to pay for what has been taken in conquest. |
| R/SP: | And people are so profoundly lonely. I saw this commercial that struck me like a brick, about a hospital outreach program for alcoholism, drug abuse or addiction in general. It cited this statistic: “One out of four people will have a mental breakdown.” I thought: “What a claim for this society!” |
| bh: | And of course we never know about black people or people of color who are breaking down (in some way or another) every day, because the political forces we contend with in everyday life are so grave that they render us helpless. There’s no way even to chart those breaking-downs, those dysfunctionalities, those moments when people just feel like—as black woman law professor Patricia Williams wrote in an essay, “There are days where I just don’t know … I look at myself in a shop window and I think, ‘Is this crazed human being me?’ I don’t know who I am.” And she talks about how all the effort it takes—the forces involved in just dealing with sexism and racism and all those things—can just destroy our sense of grounding. |