Diane Ocaranza

P. Greer Jarman
Course HD 361
28 February 2015
Assessing--Where We Stand: Class Matters
Thinking about a classless society can make a lot of sense, since most individuals
continually are concern with what stands right before them and do not think about the
bigger picturewhat is really going on in our nation. Before having read some of the
readings in class such as Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson and
Where We Stand: Class Matters by Bell Hooks my focus shifted from racism and sexism
to classism (not that the prior two do no exist). The aforementioned readings shine some
light at what really is behind racism and sexism, the more people are concerned with
being different and superior than their counterparts through race and gender, our nation is
working on a hidden but obvious agendaclass genocide. As I have noticed myself and
through reading different documentaries on urban cities, we oftentimes realize that the
ones killing the poor are the poor. This is done through gang violence, through the
distribution of drugs and heavy alcohol consumption, domestic violence, racial violence,
expectation of children and teens from their parents or relatives to become school
dropouts, teen parents, and basically the children and teens of urban communities are
constantly told that their future is limitednonprosperous. So our future generations
within the urban communities begin to believe these misfortunate lies (or to some truths),
but what about infiltrating a state of mind where striving, where dreaming, hoping, and

acting makes realizationachievements come true. The struggle is undoubtedly grand,

but not big enough to not have our urban generations overcome it successfully.
For instance, we have Bell Hooks who comes from the segregated south where
race and the color of your skin are about the only labels printed on your forehead. Race
and color define the person disregarding other virtues or talents this person may have.
And so, how does a person of a disadvantage color or race break free from the slightest
forms violence and imposed poverty against her and her kind? Well, seeing in her year
2000 book Where We Stand: Class Matters, Bell Hooks reveals that above all she
concentrated on survival, on making do (p.25). By having her mind set on survival
mode, she actually defeated the odds against her because all through life this same
survival mindset pushed her as far as completing a doctors degree and becoming an
affluent writeran author of her own books, which are to be read not only by one race
but by many others.
Bell Hooks is the epitome of what it means to overcome obstacles. Not only did
she defeat poverty, but she also broke racial barriers some that perhaps as she points out
would not truly exist, if class genocide were not in the nations agenda. Hooks continues
to describe such process in the poor communities, [The poor are] Robbed of the capacity
to function as citizens of any community (unable to work, to commune with others, even
to eat), they become dehumanized victims of an ongoing protracted genocide (p. 67).
And so why with a ton of resources in the world, why with the plenty EXTRA that the
rich have, not do something about helping the poor? It all comes down to an indefinite
greedconsumerism which is influenced by the white supremacist capitalist
patriarchal ruling class (p. 67) as Hooks notes. How are the multitudes of impoverished

individuals that lack influential power to break free from such inhumane unfairness? This
reality is one many of us face unwittingly. We have no idea why so much is taken from us
and who is the one constantly taking. Thus, we live life assuming that we live in the
amicable United States of the freefree of classismat least from all the classes that
stand in between the poor and the rich. It is unfortunate to consider that if the rich do not
become compassionate and act to support the poor, in the future we will live in a nation
where perhaps the poor will become extinct.

References:
Hooks, B. (2000). Where we stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge.