Killing rage: Ending racism

Cultural and social critic

One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, the author of such powerful and influential books as "Ain't I a woman" and "Black looks", Bell Hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must be achieved hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race.

Oppression in black life

"Killing rage" speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays, most of them new works, are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. Bell Hooks defiantly creates positive plans for the future rather than dwell in theories of a crisis beyond repair. The essays here address a spectrum of topics to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans, friendship between black women and white women, anti-semitism and racism and internalized racism in the movies and media. Bell Hooks presents a challenge to the patriarchal family model, explaining how it perpetuates sexism and oppression in black life.

Racism

Racism refers to a belief system that humans can be separated into various groups based on physical attributes and that these groupings determine cultural or individual achievement. This racism can lead to prejudice against individuals based on a perceived or ascribed race.
Many historians have argued that racism has been an integral part of the United States of America since it was first colonized by Europeans. The fuel of the racism was due to the fear of sex among Africans and Europeans. This relationship was specifically afraid of African, Native American, Asian, and Latin men with European women. The thousands of lynchings were testimony to this. This legacy is still seen in the antimiscegenation laws which were repealed only within the past few years. This change began the infamously long period of the American slave society, in which slaves were primarily used for agricultural labor, notably in the production of cotton and tobacco.

Fierce anger of black people

Bell Hooks calls out the tendency of much of mainstream America to conflate black rage with murderous, pathological impulses, rather than seeing it as a positive state of being. And in the title essay she writes about the killing rage, the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism, finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change. Her analysis is rigorous and her language unsparingly critical, but Hooks writes with a common touch that has made her a favorite of readers far from universities. Bell Hooks's work contains multitudes; she is a feminist who includes and celebrates men, a critic of racism who is not separatist or Afrocentric, an academic who cares about popular culture.

Killing rage

Killing rage: Ending racism by Bell Hooks
ISBN: 0805050272

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