Repinted from: http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1278November 19,1995
BRIAN LAMB: bell hooks,what's the name "Killing Rage" about?
BELL HOOKS: "Killing Rage" really came out of this experience I was having. I've always seen myself as a very non violent person. And I was on an airplane with a friend -- we were both in first class and we both had seats. And then a white man wanted to come on at another stop and wanted a seat and had the right boarding pass, which my friend didn't have. And we ended up in this enormous misunderstanding that became quickly very racialized. And in the midst of it, after it all happened, my friend had been very humiliated in front of everyone and sent to coach and what have you. And he sat down on her belongings and he said to me, "You know, I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault."
And I felt such a sense of rage and powerlessness, but I really felt like I could murder him and I was so stunned. It was as if all the pain of racism and white supremacy had just descended on me in that moment. And I was struck by just how rage can also empower you. I began to write the lead essay in the book. And one of the things I keep saying in the book is that rage is healthy. None of us imagine that we can have a love relationship where we're never angry. The question becomes: what do you do with your anger? How do you utilize it?
LAMB: Which book is this? What numbered book for you?
HOOKS: This is my 11th book.
LAMB: And what's special about this one?
HOOKS: "Killing Rage: Ending Racism" -- what's special about it is that it really has the profound belief at the core of it; that it isn't that difficult to end racism, that we can divest of white supremacy. And in this particular time in our history, I mean, let's remember that I wrote this book way before the O.J. Simpson case, the Million Man March, so it's not trying to capitalize on those events. And way before those events, like Andrew Hacker and other writers, I was trying to say: this country is still seething with racial tension. White supremacy is widespread. We've got polls telling us that many white people believe black people are genetically inferior, etc., etc. And I thought this is a time of crisis that we, as a nation, need to be facing. And, of course, as an individual, you can't force a collectivity to face it in the way that recent events have forced the issue of race and racism back onto the national agenda.
LAMB: Where do you live now?
HOOKS: I live in New York City. I live in The Village.
LAMB: What do you do?
HOOKS: I'm a professor at City College. I'm a distinguished professor of English. I teach at 137th Street in Harlem. And I came there from being an assistant professor at Yale and then a professor at Oberlin College. So I've really switched gears from being at predominantly white, privileged class institutions to being at a public institution that is 90-some percent non white. Many of our students are immigrants or the children of immigrants. So it's a wonderful new teaching experience.
LAMB: What's the difference in getting up in New Haven and going into your classroom at Yale and getting up in New York in The Village and going to your classroom on 137th Street?
HOOKS: Well, I am not a subway taker, so a big difference for me is riding that subway. I was saying that part of something that's still magical about a city like New York is that people do meet cross race and class; that somebody who might be quite rich who's taking the subway may sit down next to a homeless person or vice versa. And so that there is that sense of there being locations in New York where people mingle whether they want to or not with diverse groups of people with people from all classes. So many of our cities are car driven places so you don't see people who are different from you. I mean, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is so many Americans really don't realize that most of us live in racial apartheid; that we live with people that are just like ourselves and that, in fact, there isn't the kind of social mingling of the races that we often see in television and mass media.
LAMB: Go back to that question -- when you go into a classroom in New Haven, was it mostly white?
HOOKS: Absolutely. Predominantly white.
LAMB: Now what does it feel like, as an African American, standing in front of an all white class and a mostly mixed, racial, non white class?
HOOKS: Well, one of the things that I keep saying in the book, particularly in the beloved community, is I have always been deeply moved by all of the activists around racism who have centered on love as the anecdote to fear. So whenever I'm in a situation of difference, I feel like I try to call on that will to love as something to invite people to enter the space of difference and not feel afraid, feel that something magical can happen. So the years that I taught at Yale were incredibly magical teaching years for me. And part of the hope I feel about ending racism is I see many of the students I taught there, many of whom are from privileged classes, really most of whom, be they black, white Asian, what have you, now choosing to take the kind of jobs that allow them to work at ending domination and ending racism.
And it was exciting to be in that classroom, and it's totally different to be in a classroom where many of my students are mothers. A couple of my students are older than I am. I'm 43 years old, and it's awesome. It's an awesome teaching challenge for me after being at institutions where your students don't have reading and writing problems. They don't usually have a first language that's not English. And it's just a different experience, but I find the caring for students and wanting them to be self actualized in their lives makes both of those experiences similar in some ways.
LAMB: You say in your book that most black writers write for white audiences.
HOOKS: Well, I think that most of us -- we live in a culture that is not full of literacy. I think that one of the great myths of our culture is that everybody can read and write and that, in fact, when it comes to selling books and writing books, I mean, most people have a sense of an audience out there that is a book buying audience. And even though we've proven in the last few years that black people constitute a big book buying audience, we simply by shared numbers, we can never be the book buying audience that white consumers constitute. And I think as more people know that, it's easier to pitch a book towards a white audience in your thinking and how you write and the language that you use.
LAMB: If you were to come across somebody reading your book, propped up somewhere, sitting there, what kind of a person do you envision when you sat and wrote these essays do you want to read this book?
HOOKS: Well, I think that I wrote this essay -- I was always fond of that commercial that said VD is for everybody. I wrote this book for everybody. What I think is odd about it is that a lot of the essays are very different, and there are some repetitions in them because, in fact, different essays might engage different people. I used four essays in the book that had been published elsewhere, and they were the essays that I had gotten the most mail back from white people, black people, other people of color, saying, "Oh, I didn't understand." For example, you notice in the book that I use the term white supremacy. I prefer that term to racism because it implies that all of us, no matter our color, can hold white supremacist attitudes.
And for people who don't understand that, I try to explain white supremacist attitudes can be just the belief all black people are lazy. I mean, there are a lot of black people out there saying, "Well, black people are lazy." So the notions of inferior superior thinking around race isn't just something white people hold. All of us are socialized into white supremacist attitudes. And so when I wrote this book, I was thinking about all of us as being accountable for racism and white supremacy, not simply white people, not simply black people, but all of us who live in this nation and who are socialized into certain belief systems around race.
LAMB: Where did you grow up?
HOOKS: I grew up in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where I just was last week. It was fabulous to be home with my parents. And I had a book signing there, and so in keeping with the kind of community I grew up in, I saw my grade school teachers, those that haven't died and passed away, and my high school teachers. And it was exciting because I grew up at an enormous time of turmoil in the '50s, where we were so racially segregated. I mean, we had the real hard core South African apartheid. And I think that many people who don't live in the South forget that that history is still so recent. And I could sit there at this book signing with my high school white drama teacher, whom I fondly remember as one of the few white teachers that didn't look upon us as genetically inferior, who was caring towards us and who was very concerned with ending racial injustice. And, I mean, I remember those years.
And this is another thing that's a source of my tremendous hope about ending racism. I think those of us who really lived in apartheid know how far we've come as a nation. We know that things have changed, and we also know what hasn't changed. And so partially I wanted to evoke some of that in this book that I mean, I haven't given up on white people and their capacity to divest of racism and white supremacy because I lived in that world where to have a white friend come to your house or invite you to theirs was really -- people were risking their lives. They were risking their jobs on both sides. So I saw the kind of courage people can have in the interest of ending racism. And that courage has sustained my belief and my hope, despite the fact that I think, as a nation, we have become very despairing and very cynical.
LAMB: What do your parents do?
HOOKS: My mother worked often as a maid when her children were older, but for the most part, she stayed home. And my father was a janitor at the post office, and he's retired. They're both over 60 and enjoying being at home and puttering around.
LAMB: How many kids in the family?
HOOKS: I have six sisters -- well, no, five sisters. I'm the sixth girl, and one brother. I'm the middle child.
LAMB: What do they think of what you're doing?
HOOKS: Well, I've been a lucky person because I think, like many homes in America, that I would identify my home as dysfunctional in some ways, and I now think of myself as a gifted child in a family that often didn't understand that. But I've always had the support of my parents to be a reader and a thinker. I think that one of the things people forget -- it's interesting because it was something that was not mentioned at the Million Man March, for example -- the role of education in racial uplift that -- I mean, I grew up in that grand era of civil rights where people really emphasized if you want to fight for freedom, you're going to have to learn how to read and write.
I mean, I was saying to somebody that one of the things that disturbed me about the march was all this notion of men being responsible and having jobs. But, first, what if there are no jobs out there and what if you don't read or write? I mean, there are some hard core issues that we have to face, that we can't talk about resisting certain politics of domination if people don't have basic skills. I'm where I am today because of reading and writing and learning how to think critically, and that positive affirmation was given to me by my family, my church.
I was just home, and talking about the meaning of my church in the sense that I went to the kind of black church that really focused on education. If you had a particular gift, the church really encouraged you to use it and develop it. And so that church was very central to my sense of myself as a thinker and my sense of entitlement to be a thinker and to feel that we're all called to a purpose in this world and that we have to figure out what that purpose is and do it. And so those combinations of factors, but really the focus on reading and writing. And I'm very keen with my students on really encouraging them to see reading as a place of change and cultural transformation.
LAMB: You say in your book that your grandmother used to be critical -- I mean, I'm not sure what the language is -- you can explain it -- of dark black people. What was that all about?
HOOKS: Well, one of the things that many white people in our society seem to have just become aware of is that black people have always had color castes in their society, where the lighter you were, the more valued you were. And my grandmother, who was very light, who could pass for white even, who lived in a white neighborhood -- I mean, think about the fact that, on one hand, we lived in this very racially divided world, but occasionally there were the rare black person, usually one who looked white, that lived in an all white community. And my grandmother was one of those people who had always worked for whites and who had acquired this land, who had purchased it from white people she had worked for and lived there for a great many years. And in our domestic arrangements, we all learned that the darker you were, the more you would be devalued not just by white people but by black people as a whole.
I mean, I think that partially -- again, if we think about white supremacy as something that teaches us the dark is bad and the light is good, it's not surprising that a lot of black people feel darker-skinned black people are not as good. And I think darker-skinned black people suffer racism in a particularly unique way different from that of other black people because there's such a great fear of the darker-skinned black person. Often, when we turn on TV, the criminal is someone who's darker-skinned; the whole notion of a major magazine darkening O.J. Simpson's face; I mean, the whole idea of the dark as a sight of danger and threat. And black people have absorbed that kind of thinking in our society as well as white people.
LAMB: Well, what's the skin color of your other five sisters?
HOOKS: We are totally diverse in skin color, and I think that it's partially seeing the difference in how my darker-skinned sisters were treated in the world as opposed to how I was treated as someone who was lighter and who had straighter hair -- all of those things. I mean, every black person who's lived in a traditional black community understands that these forms of white supremacy, what we often call internalized racism, are part of our lives, and that we haven't ended those things in our own communities. So that's why I keep coming back to the fact that racism and white supremacy is something we're all accountable to ending right now, not just white people or not just black people, but all of us.
LAMB: Did you ever talk to your sisters about this?
HOOKS: Absolutely. I mean, we talk about it all the time, especially my sister Gwenda, who's now raising children -- girls that are darker-skinned. We used to say -- people used to say -- dark children were evil or the darker you were, the more demonic you were. And when she began to raise very bright, beautiful, darker-skinned girls, she could see how the culture lays on them a particular burden. Or a few weeks ago I was with a five year old girl, incredibly gorgeous darker-skinned girl, and she was telling me that she could not be the princess. And I kept saying, "Well, what do you mean you can't be the princess?" And she explained to me that the princess would have to be someone who was light. And I was so -- I just thought this was so sad that TV and -- I mean, the message that kids get through who gets to be on the kids' show or in the kid book is that the lighter you are, the better you are; the darker you are, the badder you are.
LAMB: Well, when did you leave Hopkinsville?
HOOKS: I left Hopkinsville when I was 17 to go to Stanford University where I went as an undergraduate.
LAMB: And why did you choose Stanford?
HOOKS: I chose Stanford because a woman teacher had gone there -- white woman teacher -- and felt that I should go to a place that was more open and more intellectual and that would widen my horizons which, of course, it did.
LAMB: When did you know that you had a writing talent?
HOOKS: Well, again, this goes back to my church. My church used to encourage us to write, and I started to write ...
LAMB: By the way, what denomination are you?
HOOKS: Baptist.
LAMB: Southern?
HOOKS: Southern Black Baptist. And I used to write and I used to say to my parents, "You know, I'm going to write when I grow up." And, in fact, I just was reading an essay -- at this conference in Kentucky -- where I said that my mother has said she'd written poems when she was little. I started off writing poetry and knew that I wanted to be a writer. And I've been thinking lately a lot, especially when I teach students, that there seems to be a fundamental difference between somebody who knows what they want to do early in life. I mean, my whole life has been directed towards this goal. I remember 12 years old saying, "I'm going to be a writer," and writing my little things and reading them to my sisters and brothers. And I now see in life that there is such a difference between people who know what they feel called to do and people who feel like they're still searching. It's amazing to me when I think about self development and self esteem, how different it is. I feel incredibly blessed in my life pand part of that blessing is fulfilling the dreams that I had around being a writer.
LAMB: You know, on the cover of the book here is your name, and wherever you see your name, it's small "b," small "h." Is that the way you write it?
HOOKS: Well, the name bell hooks is a pseudonym. It's my great grandmother's name, and I came to my writing through feminist movement. And at that time, we were very concerned to critique the idea of stardom, and the idea was that it was more important what was being said than who said it. And many of us chose, in the early '70s, to use pseudonyms to write because we were trying to get away from the focus on the personality and the ego. And because I was involved with Eastern religion and Buddhism and other things, I was also trying to get away from that ego attachment that we have to a name. So the use of the small letters was a way to sort of say, first, it's not really me because I'm not just the book that I've written. I'm a holistic self. And it really does work to make people think about a name. What makes a name important? Those small letters that are kind of equal, that don't have that kind of hierarchical look -- has an effect on people.
LAMB: What was your original name?
HOOKS: My original name that I still use in daily life is Gloria Watkins.
LAMB: So if I wanted to find you out there in the world, I'd look for Gloria Watkins.
HOOKS: This is true.
LAMB: Does that cause a problem when you're trying to become known?
HOOKS: Well, it's so funny because I guess one of my early figures that affected me was Emily Dickinson. And I love her poems, and I often think of her as my Emily D. And I think that I thought my writing life would be like hers, that I'd be always reclusive somewhere writing. And it's sort of like the idea was you'd send these books away, and someone would accept them and they'd publish them. And, in fact, I didn't think about -- you know, we've become so much more sophisticated now around having authors go out and come on television, and all of those things were not a part of how I imagined a writer's life when I was choosing this name and when I was 17 years old and to use, so it has been interesting.
It's interesting because just in terms of racism or sexism, often people develop an idea of you based on a name, or people will tell me that reading my books and the name, they have this idea that they're going to meet this like harsh or powerful kind of person. And then a lot of times people meet me, as one reporter from The New York Times said two days ago, he was shocked to find that I was so playful having read my books. And I think there are so many ways in our culture that we develop a stereotyped image of someone, and we hold to that image, even though we have no basis for it. And I think that takes us right back to assumptions we make about people based on skin color or sex or how they're dressed. We're just a culture obsessed with judgments, and I think that's been part of the difficulty of ending racism.
LAMB: You went to Stanford. How long were you there?
HOOKS: I finished my BA there.
LAMB: In what?
HOOKS: In English. And I went on to the University of California where I got my Ph.D.
LAMB: At Berkeley?
HOOKS: University of California Santa Cruz. I wrote my dissertation on Toni Morrison long before the world was celebrating her as the incredible writer she is. And that was really wonderful to be able to do that.
LAMB: From there?
HOOKS: From there, I went to my first full time job, which was being an assistant professor at Yale in English and African American studies.
LAMB: What was your first book about?
HOOKS: My first book was "Ain't I A Woman? Black Women & Feminism." I mean, from early on, I think two movements have shaped my thinking: the movement for black self determination and the movement for gender justice, feminist movement, women's liberation -- whatever you choose to call it. But those two yearnings have informed my vision and my work.
LAMB: As I read your book, I underlined long sentences.
HOOKS: Yes, I'm known for writing long sentences.
LAMB: Well, but I want to read them and I want you to tell me what they mean or expand on it. Here's one. First of all, this essay is "Moving From Pain To Power." What's the title all about?
HOOKS: Well, the title is -- I was thinking a lot about the danger of any of us assuming a victim identity, and I was also thinking about the psychological wounding of racism and that people really cannot begin to work for justice for others if they are personally wounded. I think we've seen so many movements -- certainly the black power movement of the '60s -- we've seen so many movements undermined by the egos of individuals, by the dysfunctionalities that individuals haven't dealt with. So "Moving From Pain To Power" is an essay where I'm trying to suggest that black people have to deal with those psychological wounds if we are to go forward in healing ourselves so that we are not continually internalizing racism.
LAMB: Let me read this. "Revolutionary black liberation's struggle in the United States was undermined by outmoded patriarchal emphasis on nationhood and masculine rule. The absence of a strategy for coalition building that would keep a place for non black allies in struggle and the lack of sustained programs for education for critical consciousness that would continually engage black folks of all classes in a process of radical politicization." What's that mean?
HOOKS: Well when the Civil Rights Act was passed, Malcolm X said that you cannot legislate goodwill. And I think that one of the things that happened with civil rights is that a lot of people felt, "We've made it, we've legislated an end to racism." And so people thought, "You can stop," in the same way that a lot of people think sexism is now over; we can stop. And what happens is people stop doing the work of change and they stop trying to change people's attitudes. So I was saying -- in that particular piece -- that once you stop the work, things actually -- attitudes begin to fall back into place in the old ways, and that's kind of why we are, as a nation, still trying to solve a problem that was so evident to us 20, 30 years ago.
LAMB: Go back to that plane ride. What year ...
HOOKS: Well, that plane ride was just -- what? -- 12 months ago.
LAMB: And what did you say to the man? Did he sit next to you then?
HOOKS: You know, he sat next to me, and I was feeling that explosive rage. And it turned into overwhelming grief, and I just began to weep.
LAMB: With him sitting there.
HOOKS: With him sitting there. No one said a word to me. Everyone in first class was white. All the stewardesses were white. They completely treated me as though I was invisible. No one acknowledged my grief. It's so funny because ...
LAMB: Did they know what was wrong?
HOOKS: Oh, I think everyone knew what was wrong because afterwards -- I didn't put this in the book, but afterwards -- the friend was actually a lawyer. And afterwards we met with people from the airlines, and several of the stewardesses admitted that there had been a racial bias in forming the way things were done. And so there was a lot of comfort in having -- and this I say, too. The white people who dare to courageously name racism when they see it create a healthier space for all of us to live in because just having one white person say, "This really was racialized. This is not something that these two women have made up in their minds."
But, actually, I felt overwhelming grief, and I was thinking -- last Sunday, I was flying back from Kentucky. And there was a white woman sitting, weeping, next to me. And I kept thinking about racial boundaries and all the ways that we don't reach out. And I turned to her and I said "What's going wrong for you right now?" You know, and she said, "Oh, I'm just on standby, but I really need to get on this plane." And I said, "Well, I think we can figure it out." I said, "I think there's always a way to do things, so why don't we pause for a minute and work together?" And it struck me and she was so sweet in receiving that offer because I think that we're made to feel right now as a culture that anybody who's different from you is a potential enemy, a potential threat. I think there's a rise in xenophobia -- you know, fear of difference -- that is leading people to not even be able to offer the sort of basic kindness to each other that is so necessary for any kind of domination to end.
LAMB: Go back to that plane ride again. Did you sit next to this man for the whole trip?
HOOKS: I did.
LAMB: How long was it?
HOOKS: I wept for most of the trip. It was about an hour and a half. I wept and I wrote. I wrote that essay. I wrote the entire essay ...
LAMB: Right on the plane.
HOOKS: ... on the plane.
LAMB: Did you ever have a conversation with him?
HOOKS: Never.
LAMB: Did he have any idea what was wrong?
HOOKS: Oh, yes, because he could see what I was writing. I wrote that "killing rage" in big letters.
LAMB: How old was he?
HOOKS: He was between the age of 30 and 40. And that's what also made it sad. I think if he'd been an elderly white man, I would have felt like, "OK, maybe he's from an old world," but he seemed to be your classic white liberal.
LAMB: Did he have a tie and a white shirt on?
HOOKS: Yes, he definitely was in a suit with his tie.
LAMB: What did he say? Do you remember the language he used?
HOOKS: He didn't say anything ...
LAMB: I mean, before ...
HOOKS: Before, he didn't say anything. That was the interesting thing. He simply went up and was negotiating with the stewardesses and they were the heavies. He said nothing, which is why I think he saw himself -- and this goes back to the dilemma of ending racism -- he saw himself as not accountable because he didn't make any gestures. They were the ones who -- what they did that was so bad, I thought, was they called her to the front of the plane. It was crowded. Everybody was looking. And they began to accuse her of lying.
LAMB: Lying about what?
HOOKS: About the seat, that she'd never had a boarding pass and the fact that people couldn't see that there had been a misunderstanding, that it quickly went to "you're lying," the idea of black people as dishonest, which has been so fundamental to racism in our society; the notion that a black women, particularly, as these scammers, whether we're talking about welfare mothers or -- I mean, there's just an image in our culture often of black women as liars, whether we're talking about Anita Hill -- all of these kind of sexist, racist stereotypes, and they were all in play at that moment.
Continued...
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