killing rage: Ending Racism [Unabridged] [Paperback]

bell hooks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1996

One of our country’s premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go 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.

Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having 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 movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks 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 positive change.

bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College of New York. She is the author of the memoir Bone Black as well as eleven other books. She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bell Hooks, the influential writer of Ain't I A Woman?, offers a black and feminist perspective on the issue of race in America. Throughout the 23 essays, Hooks seeks a way out of the cycle of racism. A provocative voice seeking wisdom in the din, she boldly asserts "this nation can be transformed... we can resist racism and in the act of resistance recover ourselves and be renewed." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

If cultural critic hooks (Black Looks), distinguished professor of English at New York's City College, doesn't have a comprehensive plan for achieving her subtitle's promise, her sensitivity to the intersection of race, class and gender infuses many of these essays, written during the past 20 years, with challenges to conventional and liberal wisdom. Deeming her own rage "constructive," she urges that collective black rage be linked to a passion for justice, even as she warns that privileged blacks' "narcissistic rage" leads to public trivialization of poor blacks' real grievances. Though her declaration that contemporary feminism has done little to help blacks seems sweeping, hooks rightly argues that white defenders of Anita Hill have done little for poor black women, and that whites who deny that they are racist must engage in regular interaction with black folk. The author discerns that the recent wave of black self-help books ignores the link between personal and political change, and rues that contemporary black activists have forgotten the "profound critique of capitalism" their forebears raised in the 1960s. Also, she wisely warns against turning Afro-centrism into utopianism and wrenching multiculturalism into narrow nationalism. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; Unabridged Version edition (October 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805050272
• ISBN-13: 978-0805050271
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bell Hooks is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation's leading public intellectual by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader's 100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life, she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is now a Distinguished Professor of English at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of more than seventeen books, including All About Love: New Visions; Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Art on My Mind: Visual Politics; and Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She lives in New York City.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate call for "race talk" and Black consciousness October 18, 2001

By Bakari Chavanu

Format:Paperback

I'm sort of a bell hooks fan. I've always liked her keen intelligence, lucid writing, and her ability to name oppressive forces that impact us all.

Many people will not like hooks because she doesn't write from an activist experience. She's primarily a cultural critic, providing insight and analysis rather than strategy and tactics. Her lack of political activism is indeed problematic, but as an activist teacher, I turn to hooks for inspiration and vision for how to engage my students and other folks in the educational community in visions of radical change.

In "Killing Rage," hooks comes on very strong in naming racism as a White, patriarcial, capitalist enterprise. In providing this analysis, hooks is examining instutions of both covert and institutionalized racism, the latter of which is harder to name and explain.

In this work, bell argues that the ending of racism must come through a "collecitve black rage." which means that "Progressive black activists must show how we take that rage and move it beyond fruitless scapegoating of any group, linking it instead to a passion for freedom and justice that illuminates, heals, and makes redemptive struggle possible." In other words, bell is spreaking of what took place in the Black power movement in which collective black rage rose up against racist aparthied in America. But she's not advocating that we build on the Black Power struggles of the sixities. Collective Black rage must include solidarity with Black feminist struggle and solidarity with class struggle along all racial lines.

While hooks does not seek to exclude White allies in the struggle to end racism, "Killing Rage" seems largely targeted to African people. She's calling for African people redefine Black identity, "one that is not sexist, homophobic, patriarchal, or supportive of capitalism."

Lastly, I want to point out how hooks argues that this struggle to end racism must be tied an edcuational agenda. She writes: "Until all black people address the educational crisis in black life, we cannot hope to attain collective self-detremination. As long as progressive radical black folks ignore secondary edcuation and fail to take the initiative to call for and demand progressive anti-racist, anti-sexist education for black children, and all children, our communities will be deluged by folks who see bourgeois partirarchal pedagogy as the only hope." For me, this says it all. I strongly encourage freedom-loving people to read this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Life-Changing April 4, 2008

By moclbe

Format:Paperback

This was my first bell hooks book and, while I wouldn't say I am anywhere near as militant as she is, it gave voice to so many concerns I'd had over the years but didn't have the words or insight to explain. What a magnificent work.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Facing Racism Head On February 22, 2005

By R. DelParto VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Bell Hooks covers all bases with the most pertinent issues that involve racism. KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM is an interesting critical assessment that does not only involve African Americans, but all Americans who want to understand why racism still exists. Three major issues in the book remain in my mind and were constantly repeated in most of the chapters: self-determination, White Supremacy, and decolonization. These issues, according to Hooks, are the root and the action for resolve in understanding the racism in the United States. For a long time, the "R" word has been an invisible subject, that never comes to a resolve when it is discussed -- a neverending circle. Hooks suggests that there is a sense of denial or amnesia.

Hooks makes a good point when she discusses the issue of race as it pertains whether or not black and white women can be friends. She concludes: "If white and black women were collectively working to change society so that we could know one another better and be able to offer acknowledgment and respect, then we would be playing a major role in ending racism. As long as white and black women are content with living separately in a state of psychic social apartheid, racism will not change"(224). She goes on about patriarchy and sexism, which tend to be the where incohesiveness exists. However, white and black women relations have more in common in ending the gap by building a bridge toward activism.

For the most part, when it all comes down to it, everything that Hooks discusses leads to "let's face" the problem of racism. She states that it is possible, and it all depends on the individual, and building a community that educates and talks about learning about racism and how to deter it. KILLING RAGE is one of many books that critically analyzes racism, and Hooks' criticism was extremely understandable and directly to the point.

However, the book may have been more effective if she provided the voices, such as oral testimonies, of the people that have helped to deter the problem. The majority of the sources she used were predominantly secondary sources from previous scholarship. She makes assumptions, which contribute to a little gray areas in the book, such as when she briefly refers to non-blacks and how they may fit into the equation -- Native Americans and Asians. But overall, this is an important subject that needs attention as long as the problem exists.