It has become more fashionable, and at times more profitable, for white folks in academic environments to think and write about race. It is as though the very act of thinking about the nature of race and racism is still seen as “dirty” work best suited for black folks and other people of color or a form of privileged “acting out” for anti-racist white folks. Black folks/people of color who talk too much about race are often represented by the racist mindset as “playing the race card” (note how this very expression trivializes discussion of racism, implying it’s all just a game), or as simply insane. White folks who talk race, however, are often represented as patrons , as superior civilized beings. Yet their actions are just another indication of white-supremacist power, as in “we are so much more civilized and intelligent than black folks/people of color that we know better than they do all that can be understood about race.
— bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (via loveyourchaos)
(Source: rematiration, via loveyourchaos)
