Hooks, Education, and Marginalization

Hooks’ article describes the parallels she experienced in segregated all-black elementary school classrooms, desegregated mixed schools, and the educational system and its attitudes in higher education that also reflect similar feelings and practices from Hooks’ early education. As a once eager student, her love and desire for learning deteriorated as she continued her educational journey, and it began when schools were desegregated and continued through her graduate and undergraduate program, to eventually find herself fearing tenure in her career. Hooks describes the difference in treatment between white and black students in education as means to reinforce domination and obedience instead of education serving as the practice of freedom (4). These attitudes continued and thrived through college: “…those of us from marginal groups who were allowed to enter prestigious, predominantly white colleges were made to feel that we were there not to learn but to prove that we were the equal of whites” (5). Hooks reflects on her early experience with education in order to fully understand why she feels apprehension towards tenure in the education system and where it stemmed from.