"All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity."
hooks (intentional lowercase by the author's own convention) is intent upon eliminating racism and discrimination wherever such injustice surfaces. Because speaking up often leads to further injustice, she acknowledges that this is a difficult path to take, but she simultaneously asserts that to avoid this path for fear of retribution is to agree with the oppressors.
"There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures."
In her pursuit of social reform, hooks identifies a looming hole in the ways that social reforms are executed. Why are there no models for changing people's minds within an organization? These reforms are frequently accomplished but not systematically. She is interested not in brainwashing but in completely changing how people think and approach one another.
"Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world."
hooks speaks out against the oft repeated leftist philosophy that difference should be eliminated for the sake of equality by asserting the beauty and necessity of difference. She desires to see cultural identity praised and brought into wholeness in communities with other cultures in order to create what she refers to as "beloved community" or the idea of inter-dependent and respectful intimacy among peoples.
"As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitied against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer."
hooks sees the path out of discrimination as the unification of minorities and, eventually, of all peoples. By resisting the message of competition members of minorities gain strength through unity in order to become a force equal if not stronger than the cultural dominant of what hooks identifies as neo-colonial white supremacy. These are strong, technical terms which she uses to describe the American majority in power, which may or may not necessarily reflect the actual majority opinion of the American people at large.
