Dispatch #88 White Lesbian Age 69 Considers the Defiance of bell hooks and the Dismantling of Kamala Harris

December 15th 2021

329 Days Since Inauguration of First Woman Vice-President

766 Days Until the 2024 Presidential Primaries Begin 

Today, December 15^th, Warrior and Fearless Trailblazer bell hooks died at her home in Berea, Kentucky at age 69. Her wide-ranging and trenchant writings anticipated and helped shape ongoing debates about race, gender and class in America.  

“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power - not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist.” 

May she rest in power and peace being released from living in America as a black woman.

Dr. hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins and used “bell hooks” as a pseudonym, adopting the name of a maternal great-grandmother and styling it lowercase. She said she wanted to focus attention on her work, not on herself, while also paying homage to a relative with whom she shared an independent cast of mind.

“I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first really heard the full name bell hooks,” she wrote in her 1989 book “Talking Back.” “I had just ‘talked back’ to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks — a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.”

Kamala Harris gained public attention as the sharp-tongued articulate Senator who interrogated Lindsey Graham reducing him to stutters, and who spoke her mind pointedly and unapologetically in the debate with Biden. Unfortunately, the emerging narrative about VP Kamala Harris, while not really surprising, should be alarming for what it suggests about how black women are being used.   

Consider another bit of overlooked context for the media pronouncements about the “troubling exodus of VP staff” including Symone Sanders, Harris’s chief spokesperson. Symone Sanders joined Biden’s campaign and brought her powerful visible presence working tirelessly to shore up the support of black voters, particularly women. Reports emerged in May that Sanders felt snubbed and hurt about being passed over for Biden’s Press Secretary. www.blackenterprise.com/symone-sanders-hurt-by-president-biden-not-giving-her-press-secretary-role/

Given the apparent negative trajectory in motion for VP Harris, why would Symone Sanders remain in the Office of the VP and continue being the second black woman publicly sidelined by the White House. Why indeed?!  Why indeed. 

National and international activism driven by Black Lives Matter dominated 2020. Biden’s Presidential campaign pledged action if elected. In January he submitted bills in Congress with provisions focused on policing reform, preserving voting rights, dismantling structural racism, and alleviating entrenched poverty.   

Black women are long-time powerful leaders and effective advocates on these issues. Why did Biden sideline Harris and Sanders at this moment? Are Black women a good resource for getting elected, but, not suitable for influencing public opinion, shaping policy, and governing?  Was Manchin being pissed off about the black woman VP a warning?

Piece by piece these social justice and reform provisions were stripped away during 2021 as Democrats and the White House bent their knees to Manchin. Even at this eleventh hour when Biden seeks to pass a severely reduced version of his signature bill before 2021 ends, Manchin warns he may vote against the Biden social safety net plan because – wait for it - $1Trillion over 10 years is just too expensive. Yeah, even as Congress – Democrats as well as Republicans - approves the largest defense bill in history: $778 Billion for FY2022. 

If the future in America is to lift up social justice, equity, and reparations, then women must rise up in resistance and claim, as bell hooks proclaimed, the legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming our links to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.