Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to racially motivated hate crimes, sexual assault, and other forms of oppression based on race, gender, and class.

“The positive revolutionary vision in this work is the outcome of a willingness to examine race and racism from a standpoint that considers the interrelatedness of race, class, and gender.”

In this quote, hooks introduces her hopefulness, which comes from her commitment to intersectionality. By placing the adjectives “positive” and “revolutionary” next to each other, she counters narratives that portray revolutionary actions as negative or merely destructive.

“Those of us black people who have the opportunity to further our economic status willingly surrender our rage.”

Throughout the book, hooks advocates for rage that is productive and that brings her positive revolutionary vision to life. She uses the plural pronouns “us” and “our” to indicate that her audience is primarily Black people. When she points out the flaws of Black capitalists, she is critiquing her own community.

“We need to talk seriously about ending racism if we want to see an end to rage.”

hooks argues that systemic white supremacy produces rage. This sentence contains a conditional statement, but uses an inverted if-then structure where the conclusion (ending rage) comes before the hypothesis (ending racism). In other words, she argues that if we end racism, then we will end rage. This sentence structure puts emphasis on the action that needs to occur (ending racism) and implicitly subverts the narrative spread by white-dominated media that rage, not racism, is the primary concern.