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Robert Walczak Assignment 6

In “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” by Bell Hooks she goes into the meaning of the other and the relationship it has with people primarily white people. Hooks starts off with how the other is someone that is racial different from a white person. That the other is something new to add excitement to a dull life, white culture is the example that Hooks gives. Bell then dives into the topic of the other being used and exploited to maintain a status quo and how that the other is shifting over to be something that is pleasurable and desired. The way the other is seen as desirable in the United States is that the other consists of minorities of different racial background from a white perceptive and adds something new to the previously stated dull white culture. Hooks says that relationships with the other is good for both parties as to opens up the thinking and understanding of one part of the relationship and for the other half it removes the dreaded status quo that forces identity to remain static and for racial boundaries to remain. The other that Hooks describes as good thing that encourages people to experience more than what they thought possible when they have a good relationship. Hooks gives an example of how the other is desired with an experience of listening to a group of white boys talk about how they wanted to have sex with as many racial different women as they can. Hooks described this as a good thing because of what it meant that these boys were throwing away old white supremacist ideas and accepting a more culturally diverse social life. That desire, if old ideas of supremacy remained would have been secret and seen as shameful but is a sign of a progressive change of the perspective of whites to non-whites.