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assignment 6

While reading the first page of bell hooks’s essay, my eyes crossed and my brain froze. I had no idea what she was trying to say and I realized that I need to work on my vocabulary. And to be honest, I had to read over the first few pages of the essay before I could kind of understand what she was trying to convey. My first thought was that the Other she speaks of, was about sex and only sex. Then I started to understand her message more clearly, well at least my interpretation was that the “Other”, is a generalized word to describe people of color. Hook believes that there is a sensualization attached to people of color because their skin color and culture are different than white people. This difference of the Other is what white people find attractive and crave to explore. The media uses the Other by reinforcing this message through commercial ads and movies. bell used the movie, HAIRSPRAY, as an example of how segregation made white people more curious about black people and their culture. They desired what was against the social norm as a way to assert their own whiteness and cross personal boundaries (hook,378). There are some white people that view the Other as a sexual notch on their belt that needs to be conquered, to which hook believes is a way that white supremacy can grow. Hook also has the ideology that this Otherness should be used in a productive way to give black youth a voice, rather than continually be exploited for product placement and ticket sales. She argues that the ongoing desire of the Other will keep white people wanting more until the entire black culture is consumed and in danger of being eradicated unless the exploitations is closely watched and questioned.