Removing the context from a quote by bell hooks
Recently the following quote by bell hooks was shared and reblogged on tumblr over 350+ times:
“White supremacist power is always weakened when people of color bond across differences of culture, ethnicity, and race. It is always strengthened when we act as though there is no continuity and overlap in the patterns of exploitation and oppression that affect all of our lives. To ensure that political bonding to challenge and change white supremacy will not be cultivated among diverse groups of people of color, white ruling groups pit us against one another in a no-win game of “who will get the prize for model minority today.”
However, if you read the full text of the bell hooks essay from which this quote came, you will notice that the quote was actually spliced from two different paragraph. It seems that the quote was deliberately constructed to remove the discussions of anti-blackness among non-Black people of color, which was a central point in bell hooks’ essay.
Here’s the full two paragraphs that the quote came from. The italicized is the above quote and the bolded is the ignored text.
Just as many white Americans deny both the prevalence of racism in the United States and the role they play in perpetuating and maintaining white supremacy, non-white, non-black groups, Native, Asian, Hispanic Americans, all deny their investment in anti-black sentiment even as they consistently seek to distance themselves from blackness so that they will not be seen as residing at the bottom of this society’s totem pole, in the category reserved for the most despised group. Such jockeying for white approval and reward obscures the way allegiance to the existing social structure undermines the social welfare of all people of color. White supremacist power is always weakened when people of color bond across differences of culture, ethnicity, and race. It is always strengthened when we act as though there is no continuity and overlap in the patterns of exploitation and oppression that affect all of our lives.
To ensure that political bonding to challenge and change white supremacy will not be cultivated among diverse groups of people of color, white ruling groups pit us against one another in a no-win game of “who will get the prize for model minority today.” They compare and contrast, affix labels like “model minority,” define boundaries, and we fall into line. Those rewards coupled with internalized racist assumptions lead non-black people of color to deny the way racism victimizes them as they actively work to disassociate themselves from black people. This will to disassociate is a gesture of racism.
Why was the bolded text ignored? Why would you not at least add the full context of the quote? Why deliberarely remvoe discussions of anti-blackness among people of color? Anyway, here’s the full essayimportant context and reminder for non-black people of color to keep ourselves accountable to the ways we are raised to be anti-black and participate in white supremacy.
i apologize for reblogging the italicized without full context and erasing the ways non-black poc perpetuate white supremacy and will be working to continue to read further into the works of black writers and revolutionaries to avoid assuming that it’s always applicable to me.
(via brujitaxicanita)
