Rev Left Radio - bell hooks: In Her Own Words

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

For this episode, Breht put together a collection of clips of bell hooks speaking about her life, her influences, her ideas, and her spirituality as a way of paying tribute to her and her contributions to the black radical tradition, to our emotional and spiritual lives, and to our society more broadly. The clips are interspersed with songs from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Tracy Chapman, Lauryn Hill, and Gil Scott-Heron. Rest in Power bell hooks.  ---- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

that marvelous moment for me in the book when I'm talking about what do we teach our children about love what is the miseducation we give them and part of the miseducation we give them is that you can violate someone and then say you love them which doesn't mean to say that we I'm not saying in the discipline is important because discipline is crucial to any true love with that we have boundaries that we set boundaries So that I think part of what's happened to us as a nation is we have confused discipline with a kind of blind obedience to authoritarianism, whether it's children to parents or us to a government

or a nation that is acting in a way that is autocratic and wrong. The people will love has to do with respect when we look at children, particularly the violence of children against children in our nation right now, part of what we're seeing is a lack of care, a lack of respect, a lack of understanding. We're seeing envy. I mean, envy is a crucial emotion connected to greed and that you want to destroy what you envy when you have a 10-year-old kid wanting to destroy another kid because that kid is more popular or that is something deep and profound. That is a deep and profound lovelessness.

And we can't just talk about it in relationship to what parents are doing. We have to talk about it in terms of what we have been saying as a nation. What matters to us as a nation? One of the things I say in the book is that there can be no love without justice. You know, there's a line in George Bernard Shaw, and I'll conclude this. It says, must another Christ die in every generation to save those who have no imagination. As you talk a love, you have great imagination, Bill Hooks. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Rev. Left Radio. On today's episode, me and David decided to sort of put together an assortment of clips

of Bell Hooks being interviewed, talking about her ideas, her work, her opinions, on American society, et cetera, put together a little montage of clips as a way of paying homage to Bell Hooks who had recently just passed away. I felt, as opposed to having somebody on to talk about Bell Hooks, having Bell Hooks talk herself

is probably the best way to approach her and her work. So that's what this is. This is Bell Hooks and her own words. Now, this is not a complete guide, right? This isn't a systematic breakdown of all of her core concepts and core ideas. this is more of a glimpse or a sample of who she was as a human being and as a thinker

and as a compassionate and intellectual person on this planet and in this society in particular and she brings a certain depth a certain compassion a certain humanity a certain level of insight that is rare in American society and can really only come out of the black radical tradition and so this is our sort of heartfelt homage to Bell Hooks and and her work and her impact on society. You know, since this isn't a complete guide, this is more of a glimpse or a sample. The ultimate goal I hope would be that some of you listen to this assortment of clips from Bell Hooks

and go out and pursue her books and her other interviews and more of her work. That's the point of this is to keep her memory alive and to hopefully pass down an interest in her to people who are listening and might not have heard of her or might not have engaged with her work. So this is Rev. Left Radio's humble salute to the life and legacy of Bellhugs. Enjoy. You're a tough social critic, and one of the observations that struck me was your sense that a majority,

I don't want to misquote you, a majority of white Americans believe themselves to be superior. Oh, absolutely. But I think the worst part of that is that there are lots of black people who believe ourselves to be inferior. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that I'm talking about in this black people and self-esteem book, which is called Soul to Soul.

But I think that that's how deep white supremacy is in our nation. And often, you know, you know this, Ken, that often white people will meet a black person who completely challenges every racial stereotype that they've ever had. Rather than giving up the stereotype, they create a special category for that person and say, well, you're not like other black people. Or instead of saying my ideas of black people were too narrow or too, and I think that's the tragedy of any kind of prejudicial thinking

that when we confront the circumstance that tells us it's not so, We frequently don't enlarge our sense of things. We actually come up with new ways to protect and defend that way of thinking. Is language part of the problem? He used the word white supremacy, and I know there was an incident in which you were on a panel with two black men who sort of mocked you for using that phrase. And I find it such a helpful phrase because what I like about white supremacy

is I think it does encompass black self-hate, you know, encompasses. How do you call a little kid who's dark skin, who's, you know, washing themselves with bleach? You can't say this kid is a racist in the classical sense of prejudicial views against people of color or black people. And yet, somewhere that child has learned that there is something wrong about themselves and they should correct it. And to me, white supremacy is a useful term because it encompasses the fact that, that we can have a five-year-old who's looked at enough television in our nation to have an understanding that white is better. I've got one final question for you.

Probably an unfairly broad question. You've written for years about the challenges we face as society in terms of gender and race and class. In that period, have you seen encouraging signs? Well, I think that the fact that Abel Hooks can have, incredible readership I have tells us, I want to say to you, Ken, I think people are hungry for dissent. I think people are hungry for provocative voices that go to the heart of the matter because people want to have answers to the things that they are in crisis about. So, I mean,

there's an irony that on one hand, we have a mass media and a publishing industry particularly that tells us keep it mellow, don't say anything, but what I find is people are really hungry for truth. And that hunger, as I said in my book, Yearning, I think is something that unites us cross-class, race, sexual preference and practice, religion. And I see the hope, the hope that I feel within my own self and with other people,

is that hunger for truth and for ways to live our lives more fully in a manner that's more fulfilling and it's that hunger that keeps a place for the dissenting voice that keeps the place for speaking freely because that is both an endangered space and a space on the other hand where we have more people than ever before who are hungering to hear that dissenting voice and I think that that's the paradox that on one hand there were moments in our recent history as a nation where I felt truly frightened. You know, for the first time in my life, my mother called me and said, you must be really careful what you say when you get up on stages

because you, you know, could be assassinated. And I think that certainly if nothing else, the September 11th events around the World Trade Center brought into folks, that we are a nation where many people are afraid of free speech and want to silence people. And if we cannot acknowledge that that will to silence is growing. That's what King meant when he talked about standing in the shadows of fascism. So on one hand, I experienced for the first time ever as a citizen of this nation feeling that I was taking grave risk.

risk in standing before audiences and saying the things that I believed. And at the same time, you know, I had audiences that were eager to hear. Well, what do you think about this? Audiences of people who may or may not have agreed with me. So that's the paradox that we live within. A society that is full of promise and possibility. And a society that, on the other hand, will close things down if people feel they need to to protect the lifestyles or the belief systems that they think are the

only important belief systems. And that's the difficulty. But I'm one who believes in the outrageous pursuit of hope. Don't you know, we're talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper. Don't you know, talking about a revolution, it sounds like a whisper. While they're standing in the World Fair lines Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation Wasting time in the unemployment lines

Sitting around Waiting for a promotion Don't you know Talking about a revolution Sounds Who are people going to rise up Get this, yeah. Who are people going to rise up?

Take what's there? About those shoes she's wearing and her hair. Because, I mean, that's one of the issues, I think, that many people have, with trans women, It's the sense of a traditional femininity being called out and reveled in a femininity that many people, many feminists women feel like, oh, we've been trying to get away from that. Can you talk about that a little bit? I love that you brought that up.

I think the important thing to remember for me is that a lot of trans women do not embrace this kind of femininity. A lot of trans women, you know, don't wear high heels. and don't wear makeup and feel oppressed by that. My choice is to wear, you know, all this, I'm in show business. I'm in show business, but some of it is just about what I find aesthetically pleasing for myself, trying to, you know, I've gone through lots of phases

where I've had braids and where I've, like, you know, been sort of androgy, this very sort of androgynous phase. And this is where I feel empowered, ironically, and comfortable. I think that it's important to note that all transatlore. women are not embracing this, that this trans woman does, and this trans woman feels empowered by this.

And I don't think, and it's something I have to say, it's something that I wrestle with, you know, having an understanding of your work and an understanding of patriarchy. And it's like, am I, you know, sort of feeding into the patriarchal gays when I can, you know, in my lawn wings.

You know, so, but it is, and I think that's an issue, and my brother's like, yes, yes, yes, it's more. And, you know, it's one of those things where I'm just sort of like, okay, here I am, you know, if I'm embracing a patriarchal gaze with this presentation, it's the way I found something that feels empowering. And I think the really honest answer is that I have not wanted to, I've sort of constructed myself in a way so that I don't, so that I don't want to disappear. And I think so often there is an erasure, and I'd like to add, this normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white, supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, where there's an erasure, where there's an erasure of certain bodies and certain identities.

And I have not ever been interested in being invisible and being erased. And another thing to look realistically at our job and employment situation and to say what would actually happen to many single-parent housing? households that women had, if in fact there was not aid to assist women in a process of change and transition, many of whom are hoping for jobs that don't exist. What ideology, back to what you were saying in terms of message and the messenger, what ideology do you believe was being promulgated? Was it the nation of Islam? No, actually, I would say that first and foremost, it was patriarchy. I mean, when someone tells me in their mission, statement that no nation sends its women to war while the men sit in the kitchen, and, you know, the situation of race in America right now is like war, you know, and the men are going to

Washington. That, to me, is a real gender dialogue about conventional masculinity, which denies a history of race relations where the engagement of black women in resistance struggle has been so meaningful and so crucial. Would it have been less effective, as effective, a much more? effective if women had been part of it. Let me go on record as saying, Charlie, I have no trouble if men want to march by themselves. I feel like men could march for days by themselves, and I'd sit at home and cook and clean if they were marching for principles and values and politics. That would actually aid black self-determination. I happen to think that patriarchy has been deadly for the planet and for black men. Okay, perhaps it has. But who says that they were marking for patriarchy? I mean, that's not sure that I don't. I'm not sure that I don't. I'm not I'm not sure that was the, if you talked to all those people that were there, which I didn't,

but I've talked to people who did talk to them and wander through the crowd without television cameras and had lots of conversations, and it didn't seem to be a patriarchy. It seemed about to be about responsibility, and it seemed to be about some sense of self-esteem, and it seemed to be about fathers and sons and fathers and daughters. But that sense of responsibility was connected to particular notions about the family, not about self-responsibility first, but it was the idea that, in fact, the old idea that men acquire self-esteem

by the degree to which they can be providers and protectors, that is what patriarchy says to us. And what we know is that a lot of men provide, a lot of men protect, and they still have difficulties with self-esteem. And black women, in your judgment, endorsed feminism and responded to it? Well, in Killing Rage, I try to talk about the fact that black women have questioned feminism because of our recognition that race is always a factor.

So there's been a calling attention to racism within the women's movement, particularly the racism of privileged class women who were saying, you know, we're victimized because of certain issues that black women did not see us an occasion for victimization. Did it put black women against white women then? Yes, I think there. the core reformist-based feminist movement very much pitted black women against white women by the fact that the discourses of women of color and black women were left out for example the early on a major thesis of feminism was women need to get out into the workforce well masses of black women were already out of the into the workforce and weren't liberated masses of poor women already out of the workforce and that and that kind of work who is it liberating for so there was a

The real distinction between those women Betty Friedan was describing as sitting at home, many of whom were well educated, had been educated in the Ivy League or the Seven Sisters, you know, and weren't doing anything. And those masses of women who were in factories, who were, you know, cleaning people's homes, who did not see work as central to liberation and who were in fact fantasizing about the days of their lives when they wouldn't have to work. So there's a chapter in Killing Rage about black and white female relations where I say, Until our relationships improve, until black women and white women understand each other better,

there will not be an end to racism in this society. O.J. Simpson, what do you think? I mean, about the... Not so much... Obviously, I'm fascinated by whether people thought he was dead it or not. But beyond that, are you surprised by the reaction to it? I was deeply surprised and troubled by the reaction to it, because I feel like I was one of the of the people who religiously tried not to watch the case precisely because I felt in respect to the fact that this was a case rooted in domestic violence. Here again, I don't think that people can pretend that in fact somehow the domestic violence doesn't matter. This tragedy would not

have happened if male violence against women was not so acceptable in our culture. Because there is a line leading up to the tragedy. Whether we know who murdered this woman or not, we do know that a whole life that was structured around acceptance of violence was a part of how this couple related to one another. And that to me made me feel like once this becomes entertainment, once the camera is focused on O.J. Simpson, people will forget that at the heart of this is both male violence and male violence against women, because we've not heard anybody speculate that a group of women were outside that house chopping up anybody. So clearly, we cannot get away from the dilemma of male violence in our culture and male violence against women.

And I tried to hold to that as a way of not deflecting attention away from the fact that this was not an issue of race. I mean, that the case itself was not an issue of race. How we interpret it, how we witnessed it as a culture, it was racialized, but the heart of it still for me remains male violence against women. And but what about those, including Johnny Cochran, I guess it would say, no, no, it was about race because it was about race and it's because of the attitude of the new Europe of the LAPD well I think one even before we knew anything about the

attitude of the LAPD we know that whenever sexuality is involved and and gender in our culture people often prefer to talk about race race is easier for people to it's easier to racialize something because if we make it a case of gender we have to see a man like O.J. Simpson has very empowered Howard, by class and by patriarchy. If we make it a case of race, we can see him as always and only a victim. And so, of course, it was very important for men in general, and Cochran in particular, himself, you know, according to his ex-wife, someone who is no stranger to domestic violence, to act as though the only issue here is one of racial injustice.

Mr. Backlash, just who do you think I am? You raise my taxes, freeze my wages, and send my son to Vietnam. You give me second-class houses and second-class schools. Do you think that all-colored folks are just second-class fools? Mr. Backlach. I'm going to leave you with a backlash blue. When I try to find the job To earn a little cash

All you got to offer Is your mean a white backlash But the world is big Big and bright and round And it's full of folks like me You are black, yellow, beige, and brown, Mr. Backlack. I'm going to leave you with a backlash blue. Education as the practice of freedom.

Is it all? Yeah. Cornell and I've been having that conversation. Cornell says for 30 years. 30 years. So we are excited to be here at the new school today. I really wanted to start with a bit of a bit of a focus on Cornell because he's he has embodied in the last few years so much the lone

dissident thinker going against the grain so I want him to tell us what what does that feel like to not you know everybody you sell Cornell West he's so brilliant he's so deep and then when Cornell started espousing viewpoints that people didn't care for they'll be like your man Cornell Bell he's crazy he's losing it you need to talk to him so I want Cornell to talk to us because you know

Sweet Honey and the Rock say when you work for freedom you cannot rest Cornell really has not rested I was just on him about how many things he's even doing today so I want him to talk about

what sustains him his spiritual practice what sustains him come on over my brother. All right, my dear sister. Yeah, well, I just want to start by saying that it is a gargantuan blessing to stand next to. My dear sister, now 30 years, it was exactly 30 years ago, we arrived in New Haven as professors at Yale, and decided then to be faithful unto death in terms of following our calling, not just career, that our vocation, not just our profession.

together to be able to work together and struggle together and write the book together. We were talking about dancing at the nightclub, brick and wood on the chocolate side of New Haven together. And the 30 years later, one, just to be standing in and of itself is a blessing. It's a major achievement. And so when I think of what I've gone through the last three years, I cannot separate it from what in my own black prophetic tradition we call precious memories that connect us to something bigger than us so that somehow we can preserve a commitment to integrity and honesty and decency and to do it in such a way that you're always part of a network or a community or a tradition of struggle and bell hooks for me as you all know not just in breaking bread that's 1991 was it something like that

Yeah, that's like 23 years ago. But Bell Hooks for me has always been one of those central figures and sisters and comrade that allow me to somehow feel as if I can still be a force for good, for good. Not just intellectually, but also morally and also spiritually and also politically. and the fact that it's so rare to have a towering public intellectual who puts love at the center of her theoretical and practical work and that is my tradition

it's John Coltrane's love supreme is the caravan of love of the Isley brothers is the love train not just of the OJs but the one Curtis Mayfield had in mind when he wrote People Get Ready and that's crucial because we come from a people who've been so hated and been so despised and been so terrorized and traumatized and traumatized and stigmatized. How do you find some kind of intellectual, spiritual, moral resources

to sustain yourself in order to try both to tell the truth, expose the lies, but also to try to keep the love of truth and justice and neighbor? And of course, as a Christian, I try to love my enemies. And how's that coming? Oh, that's a wonderful question. Oh, Samuel Beckett says, try again, fail again, fail better. Try again, fail, better. So are you saying that spirituality sustains you, the work itself?

Is it sustaining or is it draining? No, it is sustaining. It is sustaining. Because, again, you know, you try, for me, the real, models are the jazz musicians and the blues women. And when you hear that BB King, I'm told is sick, but he's almost 90 years old. He still does over 250 gigs a year.

It's only 365 days in the year. So if I'll do 125, I'm running far behind the King of the Blues. And why? Because you find joy in what you do. So that is sustained. No, that's real. And we live in a culture, market-driven culture, a modified culture. joyless quest for pleasure.

So the pleasure is insatiable. You never get enough. And yet at the same time, it's so difficult to gain access to the joy. And that's why the precious memories are crucial, because the precious memories are source is not of pleasure, but of joy. It might have some pleasurable dimensions to it. We've had some pleasurable dimensions

that we won't get into right now. But we talk about joy right now, y'all. We talk about joy right now. so that the but that's what keeps you going

and that's fundamental when Cornell and I decided to have our conversation we were at Yale together both youngans in the Yale Pantheon it was itself a transgression because nobody had really seen an adult

black man and black woman stand up and talk together disagreed together but radiate love and light and we were on it there wasn't any topic that we didn't feel we could cover. And

it was really a kind of glorious collegial moment, one that you don't often get in academia. And breaking bread was for us the culmination of that conversation. Cornell and I just recently did

a two-hour follow-up that I hope to my, I have opened an institute. Cornell came. The Bell Hooks Institute. Brother Joseph came. unfortunately when Cornell was there we had

some logistical problems like a tree falling over the driveway but we worked it out we worked it out we went on anyhow and part of what we hope the Institute will be will provide a space for contemplation dreaming

critical thinking and Cornell has been my partner in continually validating the value of critical thinking. I was telling him earlier that I was disappointed because when I told several black women

academics, prominent academics, that I was going to open this Bell Hooks Institute, they were really hard on me. Like, you don't know what you're doing. You don't have the skills. You need to go ahead and place your papers with a vassar or a smith. And I kept saying, well, I want my papers to be

where my people can walk in the door. And they were like, you're dreaming if you think your people can walk in the door. But let me tell you this. If you were here Friday night, I talked about the fact that when Rutledge bought teaching to transgress, they said, you know, our sales force doesn't understand this word transgress. They don't know how they're going to sell this book. Are you willing to come and talk to them?

And, you know, naive, I was shocked. It was all white men. And when I went there, I had brought a letter from an older black woman. She said, normally I send this $10 tie to my church. But I'm sending it to you because your book changed my way of thinking. Then I had the letter from the prisoner that said, I made your name a household word around this prison. We argue, we disagree, and we read our bell hooks. And then I had a letter from a child.

And I was saying to them, there's nothing to fear about the word transgress. It just means to push against the boundaries. And when I read those letters from just everyday people out in the world, people out in the world, not academic people, but people who were saying this work matters to us. And those of you who are with me and Laverne Cox last night,

we had that amazing introduction to have that young woman stand there and say that she'd been a meth-using addict, that she had been down, down, down, and she read bell hooks, and it was one of the forces that lifted her up. I mean, who could not be overflowing

with joy? Absolutely. Because I am doing what the divine calls me to do. As Cornell is doing what the divine calls him to do and has been these past few years, I told him, I said, well, you know, we'll say talking about Obama to the end, because we know when Cornell gets on Obama. But both Cornell and I have been obsessed with the notion of prophecy and the role of spiritual calling in your vocation. I was saying to someone today that people don't realize there's nothing I've written that I didn't take it.

to my Spirit, Holy Spirit, to see, is this where I should go? Because, like, when I was first asked to write a children's book, and I was like, what? I don't like children that much. I'm an intellectual. I'm not even happy. But in the middle of the night, I got that calling. You know, I'm lying in the bed. It's midnight.

And I'm hearing girl pie hair smells clean and sweet. It's soft like cotton, flower petal, billowy soft, a halo, a crown, a covering for heads and around. So I'm up in that night sitting in my red chair here in New York City. No heat. It's cold. But I am following the direction of spirit. Spirit said, Belle, it's time for you to take this turn and help the children, see things differently, feel things differently. Amen.

Oh, that's real. That's real. That's just so real. Let me ask you this question, though, that how do you think the prophetic tradition in general, but the black prophetic tradition in particular, is doing in our neoliberal imperial regime?

Well, I think that, you know, I use that phrase, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. And what we know is that regime is choking our spiritual traditions to death. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's blinding us. And we are lost in the wilderness collectively. And so, I mean, I know that you and I, we are people of hope, but sometimes it's very hard.

Absolutely. I mean, I have a young black woman student who braids my hair. She comes over with her four-year-old. Four-year-old always has her white dolls. and she speaks her deep hatred of things black. I mean, growing up in the segregated South, in the apartheid there, I had never heard any black person speak their deep hatred of things black, but a four-year-old, she was like, well, the little girls at school told me

I can't be Cinderella because Cinderella ain't black. And, you know, I tried to reason, I tried to bribe, I tried to cajole, but this little girl's internalized racism was deeply fixed, four years old. Four years old. And yet people don't want to see that we have a serious problem that begins with our children. The education for critical consciousness we are not doing for children. And I think that one of the things we have to admit, Cornell, our relationship to the prophetic tradition started when we were children. I mean, I just recently wrote a thing for a communist journal.

and I was writing about the fact that... We've got a revolutionary communist right there, Carl Dixon. Love him, love him, love him, love him, love him. Go right ahead. Go right here. You know, from the time I was six years old, I had to read Matthew 25. The least of these. Yes, unless you do to the least of these, you don't do to me. Every day of my life, every Sunday, I read that for the children's offering.

And I was like, how could I not grow up to be on the left? Because that whole passage in Matthew was about being on the left, on realizing that it's who you serve. That's true. That determines the quality of your being. But most Christians in America manage to do that, though. You read it every Sunday and still don't understand what it means to be in solidarity with the rest of that earth. Well, evangelical Christianity, especially as one of the most corrupt ways.

of thinking that's... Commodified, commercialized to the core. And, I mean, I was telling somebody, I love those evangelical preachers on Sunday morning. I listened to them. It's all about prosperity and what you can get. And you think, wow, you know, why are people eating that up? You know, black people, you look at Joel Olstein's audience.

We may be in the academy saying, how can we get diversity? Joel Lohstein doesn't have any problems getting diversity. That's true. It's not the true. All of the evangelicals that are pushing prosperity, the prayer of job-ass guy. I'm forgetting his name. So the question for us becomes Cornell, how can we in any way bring back a liberatory spirituality to communities that are so devastated? I have pastoral counseling every Tuesday

and the pastor was telling me that in the past months a number of black ministers have committed suicide and he was saying that they had committed suicide in part because they feel they can't live up to what we are told is the kind of standard one should have to be able to serve and we were talking about how dangerous that is.

Like if the people, if the ministers can't keep hope alive in their congregations, if they can't live in integrity, because you know a lot of this stuff is sexual, it's a lot about what people are doing sexual while they're saying one other thing. And it creates a despair, not just in the person who's violating their own beliefs and values, but in the congregations that they serve. That's very real. You know, I was blessed to preach of the church and knew it just last year. The pastor was telling me they had 54 funerals in one year.

He only got 52 weeks in the year. And the vast number were precious brothers and sisters between 18 and 26. I mean, that's the killing fields of neoliberal imperial America. All right. Ferguson is just the peak of the iceberg in that sense. And we didn't have to got to the soul murder, the spiritual death on the inside with these decrepit school systems, with rich kids get taught and poor kids get tested. So it's hard for their imaginations and their intelligence to be developed.

No music, no arts whatsoever and so on, you know. When I was at Yale, we would have these debates about Cornell, and somebody would say, well, he's not a real preacher. I mean, he's not gone to seminary. And I always remember Flora Bridges. She said, well, all I know is I went to church the other night and Cornell preached and 20-some people joined the church. She was like, the truth of whether or not he was called was there in the practice. So that when we talk about theory and practice, it's all about how we can move into that space

or where we practice is real. It's deep. But both of us have a ministry of teaching. Oh, absolutely. And a vocation of teaching in that sense. I think it's a real sign of divine wisdom that I've never been called to preach. I've got too much street inside of me. And I just recognize that.

See, I don't buy into that dichotomy. you know because I don't serve a punishing God or a dominating God the God I serve is totally about love and what is love calling me to do and sometimes corner you have to admit the spirit catches hold of you and you be up doing something that you think I didn't blend on that I don't know.

I'm going to be able to be. La. La la la. Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash, just what do you think I got to lose? I'm going to deep you with the Backlash Blues. You're the one will have the blues, not me. wait and see As you go through your life with him as your literary mentor and study him, talk about him,

I presume, in your classes? Absolutely. I teach a whole seminar on James Baldwin. What is the one thing that is not brought up in the books? about him, in the histories about him, what don't we know about James Baldwin? Or what isn't talked about enough, in your opinion? I think it's not talked about enough that he was concerned so much with the well-being of black family life.

Because I think that people have such a tendency, the moment they hear that a writer is gay, to assume that, in fact, they're not interested in families. And by that, I mean nuclear families, families' interaction between fathers and and sons and mothers and sons and all of these things were tremendous issues for him. He tried hard to be a parenting figure for his nieces and nephews. And I think that we don't talk enough about the gay men and women in our culture who, in fact, are there as those enlightened witnesses that psychoanalyst Alice Miller talks about, that every child should have a kind of guardian angel that is not so much in the primary family.

structure, but that is a sort of outside observer who can come in and help, rescue, and transform. And he was that. He was deeply, deeply concerned about the stability of the black family in our times. And I think he would be deeply grieved at what has happened to black family life in the United States. Is there any part of him you didn't like or you don't like? Well, for me, you know, the thing that was really sad about Baldwin was the place of addiction in his life of the drinking and the loss of that sense of himself as someone who had value and worth. Because I think we have to remember that his own woundedness at the hands of his father, the physical beatings that he sustained, the shame around his homosexuality, those things were never healed. and alcohol was very much that force that that sued that pain. And so that was something that I felt saddened when I first began to study Baldwin,

that he never had the opportunity to drink at that well of healing and self-recovery so that we would know that he had made the journey from that internalized self-hatred to full-on self-love. self-recovery that he inspires so many of us to make. Was that community or life of alcohol part of the intellectual group that he hung out with? Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that's think about Lorraine Hansberry, she dies of lung cancer in every picture that you see of her, she's smoking a cigarette.

You know, that whole world of the beats, of the whole sort of literary world of a certain period of our culture was about drinking, drugs, cigarette, overeating. It was about excess and hedonism. And many people were victims of it. And in fact, you know, we're really lucky that Baldwin lived as long as he did because he was definitely out there transgressing in the life, taking risk, you know, being that hedonistic consumer of fine wines and all of that, you know. Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the road. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze.

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant sound, of the gallant sound, the bulging eyes, and the tristing eyes, and the tristing, mouth scent of magnolia sweet and fresh then the sudden smell of burning flesh here is a fruit

For the crows to pluck For the rain together For the winter to suck For the scent to rat For the tree to drop He is a strange and bitter cry

We have to change the scale of evaluation. Because if we continue to judge ourselves by the standards set within that imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, then we never move. Because even if we move, but we still have what I call the voice of judgment. My theory is that the dominating culture depends on the voice of judgment. you know that even when you're succeeding you're not good enough even when you know I didn't think I was a writer even after I had books published

because you know for me what did I think a writer would be what would be the magic moment that I could say I'm a writer and that whole thing had to do with my needing some type of validation outside myself to give me power and not to be able to think of

power that I can give myself, that we can self-generate. And I worry, and I talked a little bit, and we're not going to talk about Black Lives Matter tonight, but I was saying sometimes I worry because so many of our energies of protests and resistance are outer directed. You know, last night I asked, audience, what if we took away all the police brutality in our society against black males?

Would black males still be, would black males be self-actualized? Is it really police brutality that is keeping black males from, you know, I mean, I think about, I mentioned my brother last night, how my father used to say to him, glory, to me, glory, your brother ain't worth a nickel. And he loved putting my brother down. I mean, it's amazing that my brother could come out of addiction. You know, when I hear people like putting little black children and boys, especially you stupid, you dumb, down.

You think, how will that person empower themselves from that? How are we healing from that? And this particular conversation has to do with moving from pain to power. And that's really what we want to discuss about how do we, as people from oppressed and exploited groups, find our way to joy, find our way to emotional well-being, to healing. It's the mystery of iniquity. Said it's the misery of iniquity.

Said it's the history of iniquity. All falls down, yeah, children, eat your bread, little children, you know, eat your bread, because it all falls down, yeah, telling you all, it all falls down. Yo, y'all can't handle the truth in the courtroom of lies, purges the jurors, witnesses, Cricket lawyers, false indictments publicizes, entertainment, the aramis, the subpoenas, high-profile gladiators in bloodthirsty arenas, into the dragon, black robe, crooked balance, souls bought and sold and paroled for 30 talents, court reporter, catch the surface on a paper, file it in the system, not acknowledged by the maker, swearing by the Bible, blatantly blasphemous,

publicly perpetrating that in God we trust, cross-examined by a master manipulator, the faster, intimidator, receiving the judge's favor, deceiving sabers. doing injury to their neighbors, the status, gratis, apparatus, and legal waivers. It's interesting because my grandfather, my mother's father, was a positive male figure, and my dad hated him. He dogged him out. He was a pussy.

He was a this. He was a that. He was not a good enough fan because he was peaceful. That was what I most remember about my daddy goes, how peaceful he was and how good he always was. that he never had a harsh word to say my father thought that's weak you know

the definitions of manhood that I got as a so-called straight or heterosexual male growing up you had to be violent you had to be aggressive you had to be hard men didn't cry you know and it was something wrong with you if you didn't fight and you were you were the it was a kind of policing

going on and it ain't just black males again it was all the males like our culture is constantly policing boys. Exactly. We don't love boys. Don't let anybody fool you into thinking we are a culture that love boys. And what you said, before we started, patriarchy, sexism hurts us as much as it hurts women

just in different ways. Because it's almost like it's a male prison that we're stuck in. We don't realize you're in this box and you can't be anything outside of that box. And that's what I felt. You know, I was confused. You know, and what I did in college, I joined black male groups, but They were rooted, as you said, in patriarchy and sexism.

We were talking about, you know, empowerment of the community, but we're only talking about half the race. It had nothing to do with black women. Or even what they think about how, like, white people are so enamored of, Toneheesey Coates' book. But you won't find anything in his book about gender, about teaching his son to see women differently. Yeah.

And it's all about this whole idea that, you know, and everybody's so happy, it's black men. is speaking to his son. The black man is reaching out to his son. And, you know, and that's just another kind of bullshit. I said this book is very much written in Atlantic Monthly and New Yorkers speak. And I don't know what young black men is reaching out to, but it's reaching out to a mythic, fictive black male, not the reality of young black men for whom a certain kind of language isn't going to draw them in.

I mean, I think you have to be true to who you say your audience is. Is it a letter to your son because you want him to understand and other black boys to understand or is it a letter to white people so that you can let them know you're not like those other

trifling Negroes. Wow. That don't have shit to say to their sons. Wow. You know, and I want to say this. Cornell West critiqued the book, and his critique is well taken, but people got mad because they didn't like the way that he critiqued it. And Cornell has been getting a lot of hits for shooting off his mouth. I mean, do we need to know Cornell saying Obama is a niggerizing

president? No, we don't. But if people get beyond that statement to the critical meat of what Cornell says, there is nothing he's saying about Obama. that is not a sincere critique it's the way he frames it but why have we created Cornell now we used to admire Cornell he was Tana Hossi Coast 20 years

ago. People forget that. I'm not even going to let you go there because he was much more aware okay you know okay I mean he was on the left and he was dissident I'm talking about popularity okay I'm going to make

but my point is that Cornell now has been the symbol for us of a black man on the left, a black man being true to everyday people. And I don't think it's any accident that all of a sudden people are attacking him. People would be calling me saying, Bill, your friend Cornell is crazy. You need to put a muzzle on him. And it's just interesting to me that switch from people feeling Cornell is someone we should

listen to and learn from to a kind of hatred because he's not performing. That's the key word. Yes, as people feel he should perform. I was on the vineyard this summer and saw the Baldwin film, which really annoyed me. The reissued Baldwin film where Maya Angelou is reading throughout. And Skip says the same critique of quotes and Tony Morrison that Cornell said, but nobody's booing him, nobody's challenging him. It's like, oh, this is reasoned and rational.

It's not, wow, Cornell West. So I think that that is an interesting relationship between what happens if black men are emotional. I mean, I just had my birthday, and I always have people come over and read a poem. This year was poems by women. And one of the poems was when God says, yes, and it starts with, I ask God if it was okay to be melodramatic.

it. And God said, yes. But really, who have we allowed other than the black preacher to have an emotional voice? It's, my gosh. I mean, isn't that why hip-hop has had such an interesting relationship because it was indeed, in its inception, a radical, emotional voice. That's right. Not just a voice. A radical voice. I urge you to read, Imani Perry,

prophets in the hood about hip hop and the whole question of how does hip hop get transformed from being that emotional voice of black masculinity that can talk about

a range of emotionalities and feelings to the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal hip hop. Right. You know? Right.

I'm thinking about a lot of stuff since you brought up MTV. I'm going to go there. Oh, yeah. Put the blame on. the woman. No. No doubt. You know I'm just joking. I can take the heat. That's all right. I know you can. See the bailiff, representing security, holding the word of God soliciting perjury, the prosecution, political prostitution, the more money you pay to further away solution, legal actors,

Babylon's benefactors, masquerading as the agency for the clients, hypocritical giants, morally noncompliant, orally armed to do bodily harm, polluted, recruited, and suited, judicial charm and the defense isn't making any sense, faking the confidence of escaping the consequence that a defendant is dependent on the system, totally void of judgment purposely made to twist them, emotional

victim blackmailed by the henchman framed by intentions, inventions whereby they lynchman, into the false witness, slandering the accused, planting the seed openly showing he's being used to discredit, edit, headed for the alleged, smearing the individual, fear in the unsuspected,

expert witness, the paid authority, made a priority to deceive the majority of disinterested peers dodging duty for years hanging the process waiting to return to their careers do we expect the system made for the elect to possibly judge correct properly serve and protect materially corrupt spiritually amuck oblivious to the cause prosperously bankrupt blindly than the blind guilty never defy filthy a swine a generation peering it's on mind legal extortion blown out of proportion in vain deceit the truth is obsolete only two Two positions, victimizer or victim, both end up in destruction, trust in this crooked system. Mafia with diplomas keeping us in a coma, trying to own a piece of the American corona. The revolving door, insanity, every floor, sky scraping paper chasing, what are we working for? Empty traditions, reaching social position, teaching ambition to support the family superstition?

The book that I've written that most tried to frame my concern with popular culture, to a more general audience is the collection of essays, outlaw culture. And in the beginning of that book, what I say is that students from different, you know, class backgrounds and ethnicities would come to my classes, and I would want them to read all this metalinguistic theory and of difference and otherness, and they would say, well, you know, what does this have to do with our lives? And I found continually that if I took a movie and said, well, did you go see this movie and like, how do you think about it?

And I related something very concrete in popular culture to the kind of theoretical paradigms that I was trying to share with them through various work. People seem to grasp it more, and not only that, it would seem to be much more exciting and much more interesting for everybody. Because popular culture has that power in everyday life. My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you're going to get. Whether we're talking about race or gender or class, popular culture is where the pedagogy is. It's where the learning is. And so I think that partially people like me who started off doing feminist theory or more traditional literary criticism or what have you begin to write about popular culture,

largely because of the impact it was having as the primary pedagogical medium for masses of people globally who want to, in some way, understand the politics of difference. I mean, it's been really exciting for someone like me, both in terms of the personal desires I have to remain bonded with the working class culture and experience that I came from, as well as the sort of southern black aspect of that, and at the same time to be a part of a diasporic world, culture of ideas and to see how can there be a kind of interplay between all of those different

forces. Popular culture is one of the sites where there can be an interplay. My own sense is that the most enabling resource that I can offer as a critic or an intellectual professor is the capacity to think critically. about our lives. I think thinking critically is at the heart of anybody transforming their life, and I really believe that a person who thinks critically, who may be extraordinarily disadvantaged materially, can find ways to transform their lives that can be deeply and profoundly meaningful in the same way that someone who may be incredibly privileged materially and in crisis in their life, may remain perpetually unable to resolve their life in any meaningful way

if they don't think critically. As someone who's moved from teaching at very fancy private, predominantly white schools to teaching at an urban, predominantly non-white campus in Harlem, and the first thing I noticed was that my students were equally brilliant in the Harlem setting as they were when I taught at Yale or Oberlin, but their senses of what the meaning of that brilliance was and what they could do with it.

Their sense of agency was profoundly different. You know, when students came to Yale, they came there knowing that they're the best and the brightest and they think that they have a certain kind of future ahead for them, and they, in a sense, are open to embracing that future. It has nothing to do with the level of knowledge. You know, it has more to do with their sense of entitlement about having a future.

And what I see among my really brilliant students up in Harlem, many of whom have very difficult lives, they work, they have children, is that they don't have that sense of entitlement. They don't have that imagination into a future of agency. And as such, I think many professors do not try to give them the gift of critical thinking. In a certain kind of patronizing way, education just says all these people need, is tools for survival, basic survival tools, like their degree so they can get a job. And not, in fact, that we enhance their lives in the same way we've enhanced our lives

by engaging in a certain kind of critical process. When a son-up audition is commander-in-chief, stand in his feet, brethren, can we candidly speak, woe to the men, trusted in the chariots, them leaning on horses, they run their intellectual sources, count of their wisdom, creating the illusion of freedom. Confusion consumes them. Every word they speaketh and turkeys them out with they white. Internally, they absent a light, them trapped in the night and bondage to the cane in the night.

Under the curse, evil men waxing more worse, facts of the first. Angelic being cast to the earth is time for rebirth, burning up the branch in the root, the empty pursuits of every tree bearing the wrong fruit, turn them to the hill, let him who stole no longer steel. Oh, Israel, surrender for Jehovah Israel, how long will you sleep? Trouble by the thoughts that you keep, the idols you heap, causing the destruction you reap. Judgment has come, finding them return to the one, abandon the flesh, self-interest, broadway to death, pride and the greed, hiding, subdividing the seed.

The knowledge of good and evil is what caused us to lie, caused us to die, let your emotions be crucified, renounce on your thoughts, repent and let your mind be retort. You find what you sought was based on the deception you bought, a perception of naught where the majority remains caught, loving a lie, not realizing an atom or die, loving a lie. a lie, not realizing an Adam or die. Loving a lie, not realizing an Adam or die. Loving a lie, not realizing an Adam all die. It's the mystery of iniquity, oh. Say it's the history of iniquity.

Said it's the misery of iniquity. Oh, and it all all bones down. I'm telling you all I'll close down I came to his work through reading his books and then when I was in graduate school he came to the University of California,

Santa Cruz. And I was, at that time, I just published my first book, A&I, a woman, black women, and feminism. And people actually tried to keep me out of what was going to be a small group of 25 people meeting Palo Frere because they didn't want feminist issues to intrude upon this man of this, you know, great educator coming from another country. And someone said, this is just absurd. This is what education is all about.

And they gave me their slot. And sure enough, you know, I wanted to ask Palo about all of those, you know, comments about liberation being about men coming into their humanity and manhood. And when I did, people immediately tried to silence me. And he won my heart forever because he said, you know, stop. What are you trying to do this? You shouldn't. She's absolutely right to question. That's what I am saying in my work. And for that moment, I mean, he was such an incredible embodiment of who he was as a teacher and as a human being in the world that he said, look, I'm writing about openness and interrogation and the fact that people should be able to ask questions. That's what learning is about. So I don't

want anybody keeping someone from asking me difficult questions about my work. And that was the beginning of my personal relationship with Paolo Freire, which continued and, you know, over the years that we talked about the way I was trying to bring a feminist component to education for critical consciousness because so many of the men that have been influenced by Palo's thinking have not wanted to move it forward even though he has championed the notion of moving it in a more progressive direction around language. You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on scag and skip out for beer during commercials because the revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be televised. brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew to eat hogmaws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theater and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.

The revolution will not give your mouth. sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nub. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner because the revolution will not be televised, brother. There will be no pictures of you and will they make pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 832 on the port from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay. There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being

run out of Harlem on the rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still lights of Roy Wilkins strolling through whites in a red, black and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion. I began to use the phrase in my work, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, because I wanted to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality, and not to just have one thing be like, you know, gender is the important issue, race is the important issue. But for me, the use of that particular jargonistic phrase was a way, a sort of short-cup way of saying all of these things actually are functioning simultaneously at all times in our lives

and that if I really want to understand what's happening to me right now at this moment in my life as a black female of a certain age group, I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking through the lens of race. I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking through the lens of gender. I won't be able to understand it if I'm only looking at how white people see me. I mean, one of the, one of the, to me, an important breakthrough I felt in my work and that of others was the call to use the term white supremacy over racism because racism in and of itself did not really allow for a discourse of colonization and decolonization, the recognition of the internalized racism within people of color and, and, you know,

It was always, in a sense, keeping things at the level at which whiteness and white people remained at the center of the discussion. In my classroom, I might say to students, you know, that when we use the term white supremacy, it doesn't just evoke white people. It evokes a political world that we can all frame ourselves in relationship to. And I think that I was able to do that because I grew up, again, in racial apartheid, where there was a color cast system. So that obviously I knew that through my own experiential reality, you know, that it wasn't just what white people do to black people

that was wounding and damaging to our lives, I knew that when we went over to my grandmother's house who looked white, who lived in a white neighborhood, and she called my sister Blackie because she was dark and her hair was nappy, and my sister would sit in the corner and cry or not want to go over there, I knew that there is some system here that is hurting this little girl that is not directly, the direct hit from the white person. And white supremacy was that term that allowed one to acknowledge our collusion with the forces of racism and imperialism. and so for me those words were very much about

the constant reminder one of institutional constructs that we're not talking about personal constructs in the sense of how do you feel about me as a woman or how do you feel about me as a black person but they really seem to me to evoke a larger apparatus and I don't know why those terms have become so mocked by people

because, in fact, far from simplifying the issues, I think they actually, when you merge them together, really complicate the questions of freedom and justice globally because it means then that we have to look at what black people are doing to each other in Rwanda. We have to, and we can't just say racism, what have you. We have to problematize nationalism beyond race in all kinds of ways that I think there's a tremendous reluctance,

particularly in the United States, to have a more complex accounting of identity. Green Acres, Beverly Hill police, and Hooterville Jurchson will no longer be so damn relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane on search for tomorrow, because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the 11 o'clock news and no pictures of Harry are a woman liberationist and Jackie O'Donass is blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by a song. song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keyes, nor sung by Glenn Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Engelbert Humperdink, or the rare earth. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bone. The revolution will not go better with coat. The revolution will not fight germs if they cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver's seat. The revolution will put you in the driver's seat. The revolution will. The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, the revolution will be no rerun, brothers, the revolution will be live. Our personal attitudes about love are tied to our culture's politics, to what our nation tells us is important.

I mean, that chapter on greed where I'm talking about, I talk about the fact that one of the, one of the, wonderful aspects of love is giving, and that as we give to others, we grow in our capacity to connect. I mean, the first major chapter in the book says, how do we define love? How can we know love in a culture where most of us don't have a sense of what it is? In fact, the book is dedicated to my ex-boyfriend, the younger man, that you just evolved, because we had these continual fights and are still having them after eight years. We broke up five years ago, where we kept talking about, well, what is love? And it was clear that he felt often that he didn't know what I was talking about. And then I talked to other women who say the same thing

about the partners in their lives, men who say, well, I don't know what love is. So I try to It sort of echoes that idea that gender does make a difference in the way women look at love and men look at love. Well, I think what most men feel they're not looking at love at all. And so part of what the book tried to say is perhaps if we had common definitions, If we started out from a common point, what would it mean for us as a nation to start off feeling that love is important for males as much as it is for females? Because deeply embedded in our national psyche is an assumption that love can't be important to men.

How will men go and fight wars if they are dedicated to love? And until we begin to recognize that love has to be essential to men if we're going to to end sexism, if men are going to reclaim the spaces where they can be connected to their feelings, to their fathers, to their mothers in different kinds of ways. But partially the book says romantic love has been the myth that has, as the only love that really matters. It challenges that notion. That's one of the new visions that it says all the foundation of all our love, like the foundation of a house, there are certain principles that will make you have a sturdy house. And those principles are the same irrespective of the kind of house you're building.

The same is true of love. And we have been a culture that has over-valorized romantic love that no matter how horrible and miserable your life has been as a kid or as a teenager, someday you're going to find this love and it's going to come into your life and it's going to change all of that. And many of us found that that was not so. And I think a lot of men felt that one day they'll grow up and they'll be humanized by a woman or a partner giving them love, rather than thinking about what will it mean, what will it take for me to become a loving person?