Rock My Soul : Black People and Self-Esteem
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 074345605X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
World-renowned scholar and visionary bell hooks takes an in-depth look at one of the most critical issues of our time, the impact of low self-esteem on the lives of black people.
Without self-esteem everyone loses his or her sense of meaning, purpose, and power. For too long, African Americans in particular have been unable to openly and honestly address the crisis of self-esteem and how it affects the way they perceive themselves and are perceived by others.
In her most challenging and provocative book to date, bell hooks gives voice to what many black people have thought and felt, but seldom articulated. She offers readers a clear, passionate examination of the role self-esteem plays in the African-American experience in determining whether individuals or groups succeed or self-sabotage. She considers the reasons why even among "the best and brightest" students at Ivy League institutions "there were young men and women beset by deep feelings of unworthiness, of ugliness inside and outside."
She listened to the stories of her students and her peers -- baby boomers who had excelled -- and heard the same sentiments, including deep feelings of inadequacy. With critical insight, hooks exposes the underlying truth behind the crisis: it has been extremely difficult to create a culture that promotes and sustains a healthy sense of self-esteem in African-American communities. With true brilliance, she rigorously examines and identifies the barriers -- political and cultural -- that keep African Americans from emotional well-being. She looks at historical movements as well as parenting and how we make and sustain community. She discusses the revolutionary role preventative mental health care can play in promoting and maintaining self-esteem.
Blending keen intellectual insight and practical wisdom, Rock My Soul provides a blueprint for healing a people and a nation.
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As always and only victims have embraced a way of thinking about their fate that dooms them. Yet their nihilism is not merely self-chosen, it is a reflection of the nihilism expressed in mass media. McWhorter states: “Victimology seduces young black people just like the crack trade seduces inner-city blacks, virtually irresistible in its offer of an easy road to self-esteem and some cheap thrills on the way.” Black folks who see themselves as victims are sorely lacking in self-esteem, which leads.
Folks who believed that equality meant that their full humanity would be acknowledged by whites were shattered when they were faced with painful disacknowledgment. For example many black students who enter predominantly white educational structures believing themselves the equals of their white peers, when repeatedly treated, however benevolently, as second class, not only begin to doubt their equality, many begin to perform on the level of racist white expectations. A confirmation bias is then.
The group of liberal young white people who had made this decision could not give cogent reasons for their cover choice. They expressed fondness for the image. As a cultural critic I write endlessly about the ways blackness is represented and the power representations have to shape our sense of our self. And to me this image, though beautiful, conveyed a different message from the book. Luckily, I was in the presence of a group of people who were willing to listen to my concerns. I suggested.
Family system that is positive was and is continually interrogated. Whether a mass-based audience is listening or not, feminist scholarship has thoroughly exposed the reality that patriarchy hurts families, that it stands in the way of love, that it is rarely a context where self-esteem flourishes. Speaking of his own past Bradshaw writes: “From their own patriarchal upbringing, my parents and relatives learned that love was based on power, control, secrecy, shame, repression of emotions, and.
“We hurt and are hurt and have each other for healing.” And we need to remember that love cannot take root in unequal relationships, in situations of domination. I do not know any black people who think we should love white folks who seek to dominate us; then we should not expect love to flourish between black males and females who seek to dominate and control one another. A radical recommitment to a love ethic is needed in diverse black communities, the return to living consciously and living.