In her book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, bell hooks describes how she helps her students find their voice within her classroom.She discusses her use of authority to enable her students.For her, teacher authority is a necessary part of helping her students find their voices:
Another important issue for me has been that each student participates in classroom discussion, that each student has a voice.This is a practice I think is important not because every student has something valuable to say (this is not always so), but often students who do have meaningful comments to contribute are silent. In my classes, everyoneís voice is heard as students read paragraphs which may explore a particular issue.The do not have the opportunity to refuse to read paragraphs.When I hear their voices, I become more aware of information they may not know I can provide.Whether a class is large or small, I try to talk with all students individually or in small groups so I can have a sense of their needs.How can we transform consciousness if we do not have some sense of where the students are intellectually, psychically? (hooks Talking 54, emphasis mine).
I agree with hooks that it is important to understand what our students need to ìtransform consciousness.î At the same time, why must we force students to express themselves without giving them the chance to choose how? Is language really how we give our students a voice in the classroom? Hooks believes in order to give our students a voice, enforcement is necessary. But do we know if what the student reads is really how she thinks and feels? How do we teach the student to not please the teacher by reading just anything, instead reading something she cares about?
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In bell hooks’ “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, she discusses the portrayal and misrepresentation of poverty in our society and the methods behind the dilemma. In this excerpt, retrieved from her book Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994), hooks focuses on the negative effects of contemporary popular culture and its contribution to the negative societal views on poverty.
Professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, writes that a racial caste system existing in America reflect the Jim Crow laws that were "separate but equal" from the time of the Civil War until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 1960's and which continue today. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University and clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Subsequently, she was on the faculty of Sanford Law School serving as the Director of the Civil Rights Clinic before receiving a Soros Justice Fellowship and an appointment to the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Professor Alexander has litigated civil rights cases in private practice while associated with at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller law firm, with additional advocacy through the non-profit sector, as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.
bell hooks is a woman who does not concern herself with establishing credibility among her audience or critics. What is important to hooks is that she reaches the people who most need to hear what she has to say. As hooks tells us, "It is important that we know who we are speaking to, who we most long to move, motivate, and touch with our words" (90). hooks has, however, established credibility through her many achievements, such as, attending school at Stanford University, teaching at Yale, writing the book Ain't I a Woman: black women and feminism, and by starting a black women's support group. Although these are great accomplishments, no matter what your race or sex, I feel she best establishes her credibility through her character. hooks tells us that while she often may have needed money, she never had the need for new beliefs or values. She shows great strength in her ability to combine her past life with her new "privileged" life. As hooks says, "It was my responsibility to formulate a way of being ...
“The New Jim Crow” is an article by Michelle Alexander, published by the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Michelle is a professor at the Ohio State Moritz college of criminal law as well as a civil rights advocate. Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is part of the world’s top education system, is accredited by the American Bar Association, and is a long-time member of the American Law association. The goal of “The New Jim Crow” is to inform the public about the issues of race in our country, especially our legal system. The article is written in plain English, so the common person can fully understand it, but it also remains very professional. Throughout the article, Alexander provides factual information about racial issues in our country. She relates them back to the Jim Crow era and explains how the large social problem affects individual lives of people of color all over the country. By doing this, Alexander appeals to the reader’s ethos, logos, and pathos, forming a persuasive essay that shifts the understanding and opinions of all readers.
The Scarlet Letter can easily be seen as an early feminist piece of work. Nathaniel Hawthorne created a story that exemplifies Hester as a strong female character living with her choices, whether they were good or bad, and also as the protagonist. He also presents the daughter of Hester, Pearl, as an intelligent female, especially for her age. He goes on to prove man as imperfect through both the characters of Dimmesdale and of Chillingworth. With the situation that all the characters face, Hawthorne establishes the female as the triumphant one, accomplishing something that, during Nathaniel Hawthorne’s time, authors did not attempt.
The first text is a column called “Black is being seen in a whole new light” and it was written by the lawyer and columnist Yolanda Young. According to the text the African Americans has gained more acceptances from the American citizens after Barack Obama has become the president of the United States. Furthermore it
Because it is very credible, emotionally appealing, and slightly academically based, bell hooks's essay "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education" is an essay that I consider to be very touching. While arguing in her essay that the rich class and the working-class should come to respect and understand each other, bell hooks employs three elements of argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. With her usage of ethos, hooks relates her experience as an undergraduate at Stanford. Providing an experience from a time before she went to Stanford, hooks uses pathos to inspire the audience. However, hooks uses logos by appealing to the readers' logic. These readers are the working-class and the privileged, the audience of her book: "Ain't I a Woman: black women and feminism." Relying mostly on ethos, hooks uses the three elements of argument to express her belief that students should not feel the pressure to replace their values with others' values. Because hooks feels strongly about her belief, she argues that a university should help students maintain the connection with their values, so people of different communities will feel neither inferior nor superior to others but equal.
“…it is said that there are inevitable associations of white with light and therefore safety, and black with dark and therefore danger…’(hooks 49). This is a quote from an article called ‘Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination’ written by bell hooks an outstanding black female author. Racism has been a big issue ever since slavery and this paper will examine this article in particular to argue that whiteness has become a symbol of terror of the black imagination. To begin this essay I will summarize the article ‘Representing Whiteness in the Black Imagination’ and discuss the main argument of the article. Furthermore we will also look at how bell hooks uses intersectionality in her work. Intersectionality is looking at one topic and
In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for the ragged against the well dressed.
The article states “Observers have referred to the advent of mass imprisonment as “The New Jim Crow” because the devastating racial impact of imprisonment effectively isolates black poor men from economic, social, and civic life (Alexander 2011). However, we cannot forget that the old elements of Jim Crow, particularly racial residential segregation, are also implicated in the mass imprisonment phenomenon. Yet, as Peterson and Krivo write, “societal processes that lead to differences in structural conditions have been treated as outside of criminological concerns” (2010, 7)”. Michelle Alexander an African American, author of The New Jim Crow law book whose specialty, are racial profiling, racism in the United States and race in the United Sates
When people think about organizations, leaders, activist, and world changers often times they do not correlate these titles and positions with women, let alone black women. When we think of social resistance movements and the leaders who operate the movements we often think of men. Many people in society think that a man is needed to construct, lead and run a social movement so that it can be affected enough to make a significant change. Stereotypical gender roles are the reason that many of us do not often think of women when we think about social resistance movements. However, African American women played a vital role in their organizations, they were powerful activist and they were adamant about addressing the many issues that black women face in society.
I listen to my students. I allow time for their individual impute in what they are learning, and adjust accordingly. I really believe that is why students can be so into the idea of being taught, because they are all encouraged to lead the discussion and projects before them as it relates to the curriculum. I try to learn from my students by listening to their interpretation. I am learning what interest them, and feed off of it in the work that needs to be performed. Work towards a positive social society, with this education does takes place for our students, teachers, and community, all for a better future, one that is full of knowledge and acceptance. What could be any
Steele is more sure of himself and his solution in this portion than earlier on in the text. This is perceived through dictions like “we must” and “necessity” (610-611). These imperative words develop a strong opinion. This adds to the argument because an audience will tend to adhere to someone who is confident in themselves and what they are saying. Steele’s solution entails that people must begin to individualize themselves.
This feminism movement occurred at the same time as the Civil Rights movement and both had an impact on each other. The Civil Rights movement fought for equality of African Americans. Many of the feminism activist and the feminism organizations also rallied support for the Civil Rights movement. It was with this support that the feminism movement was able to piggy back off its success. The original Civil Rights Act had no protection against discrimination based on sex, only based on race, but feminists lobbied vigorously for this addition to the act (Article 4). Many male African Americans feared that this addition to the bill would kill it entirely but women like Pauli Murray, who “coined the term Jane Crow to describe her own experience of
In the book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center written by bell hooks, an African-American author, social activist and feminist first published in 1984 the author explains what she believes are the core principles of feminism. Throughout the book the author examines the early feminist theory and goes on to criticize it saying that it did not aim for a systematic change also that the movement has the potential to improve the lives of both men and women immensely. In the book the author investigates the performance of African-American women in the movement and what is needed to drive the movement towards ending oppression of all kinds.