Moving beyond Niceness: Reading bell hooks into the Radical Potential for the Discipline

Alex Moffett-Bateau, Jenn M. Jackson

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/Debate/Erratumpeer-review

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalJournal of Women, Politics and Policy
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2022

Keywords

  • Black feminism
  • Black politics
  • bell hooks
  • class
  • race and ethnicity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Gender Studies
  • Sociology and Political Science

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