As much as I find bell hooks’ work on love interesting I think I’ve finally hit on why it never fully works for me. It’s so shockingly nostalgic.

This lil bit of fire is spot on though:
“While [King] admonished black people again and again to recognize the importance of loving our enemies, of not hating white people, he did not give as much attention to the issue of self-love and communal love among Black people.”

The thesis of this series is very clearly that we are in a loveless society, which she suggests begins in about the 1980s. It’s interesting to think about all that was changing in American and Black American culture then to wonder if that tracks

Lol no one asked for this but I’m going through Salvation for a project and she really got Malcolm X wrong in my opinion. He talked about love a lot, especially loving Black women but he often framed it as protecting them, which if we’re being nostalgic and thinking about how

Newly freed men expressed love and care for the women and children in their lives it literally was protection

I’m going to stop reading for today. It’s a little sad. I did find the passage I was looking for.

“The more freedom became synonymous with gaining equal rights within the existing social structure, the less love was a part of this equation.”

Very relatedly (in my mind): read Tera Hunter’s Bound in Wedlock https://www.amazon.com/Bound-Wedlock-Marriage-Nineteenth-Century/dp/0674237455/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=bound+in+wedlock+slave+and+free+black+marriage&qid=1606517892&sprefix=bound+in+wedlock&sr=8-3

I slept on this and realized the limited way hooks' work here can be useful to my own and I feel much better about that.