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We live in an economic, political & social, and most significantly to my argument, scientific world that fundamentally looks at the world with a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal (WSCP) lens. I use the words white supremacy to emphasize how these methods are the result of one operating perspective, not a million different negative views and mistakes. bell hooks states so perfectly in her 1997 film titled Cultural Criticism & Transformation: “To me an important breakthrough, I felt, in my work and that of others was the call to use the term white supremacy over racism, because racism in and of itself did not really allow for a discourse of colonization and decolonization, the recognition of the internalized racism within people of color and it was always in a sense keeping things at the level at which whiteness and white people remained at the center of the discussion. In my classroom I might say to students that you know that when we use the term white supremacy it doesn’t just evoke white people, it evokes a political world that we can all frame ourselves in relation to… And so for me those words were very much about the constant reminder, one of institutional construct, that we’re not talking about personal construct in the sense of, how do you feel about me as a woman, or how do you feel about me as a black person? But they really seem to me to evoke a larger apparatus…”
I use bell hooks’ terminology because I believe she was an author and philosopher that was able to identify something truly universal. As cliche as it may sound, love is something that has always existed in humanity and I believe she defined it perfectly. I do actually have one contrasting view to hers which is that I believe domination and love can coexist, when we all are able to understand that the love that binds us is more important than the power we wield. But besides that one caveat, I think she crystallized the ethereal concept of love into human values and actions that are done every day.
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