Moving beyond Niceness: Reading bell hooks into the Radical Potential for the Discipline. (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Moffett-Bateau, Alex; Jackson, Jenn M.
• Is Part Of: Journal of women, politics & policy. Volume 43:Number 3(2022)
• Page Start: 409
• Page End: 416
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Black feminism -- bell hooks -- race and ethnicity -- class -- Black politics; Women -- Political activity -- Periodicals; Women's rights -- Periodicals; Women -- Government policy -- Periodicals; 323.34
• DOI: 10.1080/1554477X.2022.2075681
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1554-477X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In honor of bell hooks' legacy, we engage with her Black feminist scholarship to parse out what she offers to the study of Black politics. We explore the ways hooks rebuffed compulsory calls for niceness and obligatory congeniality via respectability politics. By interrogating the politics of the Black middle class, we locate hooks' intellectual works as a repudiation of a "politics of niceness" that seeks to maintain the violent status quo of white capitalist heteropatriarchy. We then draw out why the rejection of a politics of niceness matters within broader discussions of race, power, politics, and oppression.