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Assignment 6

Bell Hooks often uses the term “the other” in her essay. For many years there has been a need of superiority within races and sex. As discovery of other races there needed to be a comprehension of how to handle the diversity and possibly the need to be in power. Anything that was not a white male was considered to be different and this difference impacted the modern society. Commodity culture in the United States took advantage of the orthodox concept of race, gender and sexual desire through racial difference and racial sexual encounters (Hooks:367).

Anything that was not white and male was different and was considered to be called “the other”. According to Hooks, during her time teaching at Yale university, the white boys would shop for women the same way you would shop for classes (Hooks:368). Race was a key role on ranking these females. Black was top priority along with Asians. Hispanics would not be seriously considered because there was not a significant number of them in the area. Hooks further develops why these men felt strongly having sexual relations with women from other races. By doing so, these men would no longer feel restricted in one universe. Instead, race was visualized as experience. Women from other races were as exotic and they wanted to enhance their experience. Color in this sense was not negative but productive because it contributed to being sexually experienced.

The relationship “the other” that Hooks is describing is not supposed to be bad but a way of escaping from a small-minded world and experience. Sex just happened to play a major role on that. “The other” would become gain superiority in a sense when it came to the modern times because white men wanted to know what it was to be a part of other races and sex was an easy way to grasp that.