Where We Stand by bell hooks
Much of hooks’ thesis is bound up with the title of her book Where We Stand: Class Matters, which is a book about class divisions specifically between white and black people in America.
In the introduction, hooks explains that class issues are divisive and in order to “to work for change, we need to know where we stand.” (9). Challenging the misconception that America is a “classless society” and that it is nearly “impossible to change your class position” when you are a part of the working class or poor due to unjust structures is a major theme in this book (156). The first four chapters of hooks’ book serves as an autobiographical memoir of her personal struggle to successfully overcome this same difficulty. They set the stage for her to be an authority on the topic of classism by virtue of her life experience, her education, and her ability to become upwardly mobile. Out of her impoverished childhood in Kentucky, hooks rises to become a professor at Yale, a published author, and member of the upper class.
Juxtaposed with the hope of upward mobility is the “common bond” of greed in the hearts of the rich and the poor alike, and the seeming necessity for greed as a character trait “essential to making it in this society” (69). Hooks reiterates the negative influence of greed throughout her book, yet offers a solution to the problem of human greed: living simply. For hooks, living simply is about living a “life without excess” (59). A life without excess provides the opportunity to live within ones margins and be more generous to those in need. In the final chapters of Class Matters, hooks recapitulates the idea of greed as “obsessively fantasizing about the power of money and what it can do” (154). This draws people away from “realistically confronting their economic reality” and (or) “constructively respond[ing] to the world that they live in.” (155).
The perpetrator of classism in America, for hooks, is the “transnational white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (161). One of the ways she finds this patriarchy protecting it’s self-interests by not intervening against drug traffickers who are doing “the work of exploitation and genocide for the ruling class” (67). Ultimately, everyone knows that “the rich live apart from us and that they live differently” (70). The vocabulary used around this theme is some of the most inflammatory in the book, yet it is obviously a key point for hooks as she reiterates this “ruling patriarchy” theme throughout the book. A “democratic vision for prosperity” for all people where classism is eradicated is hooks’ end goal in this struggle (79).
Finally, hooks identifies how the perception of the poor has changed in modern history. hooks and many church-attending Americans developed a profound respect for the poor through Church teachings. One of the most profound paragraphs in the book focuses on the shift from caring for the poor to villainizing the poor in America. According to hooks, the mass media began to portray the poor as “predatory” and “wanting handouts” from the Government as “more and more blacks entered the ranks of the poor” (123). This change of perception reinforces the greed present in the rich, by showing how they want to hold on to their resources while accusing the greed of the poor. I appreciated hooks note of this shift in collective perspective.
Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks
This book serves as a good introduction to social inequality in America. There is little conversation about “class matters” in America, and this book does a good job of highlighting the experience of upward mobility for an African-American woman who was raised in a southern state. While much of her language around the “ruling patriarchy” seemed quite inflammatory, it stands to reason that this perception is accurate for her experience. Also, while the patriarchy problem was identified, this book would not serve as a detailed manifesto for classism change in America. It would best serve a student looking to make their first foray into the subject of classism in America. One critique that I have of this book is that it presents matters of race in America as binary: black people and white people. Obviously, issues of race and class in America are spread out over a wide variety of races. Unfortunately, hooks approaches the topic from primarily a black vs. white perspective, rather than a perspective that was inclusive of all the diversity found in America.