Where We Stand: Class Matters

by hooks,bell

• ISBN13: 9780415929134
• ISBN10: 041592913X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-04
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Where We Standis a powerful new book by one of America's most admired critics and writers. For years we have turned to bell hooks-feminist, social thinker, memoirist, teacher-for her deeply felt ideas on women, race, culture, sexuality, and more recently on love and children. Now Bell Hooks talks about class-the 'elephant in the room'-the subject we all know is central to our culture and its problems but that hasn't been given the attention it so desperately needs. Why is it that the face of poverty in America is a black face, even though most of the thirty-six million poor in America are white? How do fantasies of wealth's power help keep the poor poor? What do black teens want, and how do they learn to want it? Are wealthy black Americans any more aware of class issues than wealthy whites? Why do we need so much money, after all? Bell Hooks talks about these subjects in her own style. Drawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan coop boards,Where WeStandis a successful black woman's reflection-personal, straight forward, and rigorously honest-on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them.

Table of Contents

preface where we stand	vii
introduction Class Matters	1	(9)
Making the Personal Political Class in the Family	10	(14)
Coming to Class Consciousness	24	(14)
Class and the Politics of Living Simply	38	(12)
Money Hungry	50	(13)
The Politics of Greed	63	(7)
Being Rich	70	(10)
The Me-Me Class The Young and the Ruthless	80	(9)
Class and Race The New Black Elite	89	(12)
Feminism and Class Power	101	(10)
White Poverty The Politics of Invisibility	111	(10)
Solidarity with the Poor	121	(10)
Class Claims Real Estate Racism	131	(11)
Crossing Class Boundaries	142	(14)
Living without Class Hierarchy	156