"Bell Hooks"

It’s hard to except but this passage was easy to relate too. Bell Hooks comes from a working class background and had to deal with many obstacles that tried to limit her education. Most people at SMU, me included, do not have these obstacles. Not to generalize, so I’ll only speak for myself, but my family pushed a “good” education on me unlike Bell Hook. One thing that really struck me was “Even though I thought I sometimes envied and longed for greater material advantages (particularly at vacation times when I would be one of the few if any students remaining in the dormitory because there was no money to travel) I did not share the same sensibility and values of my peers.” I really did not understand what she meant by this statement. Was she inferring that since she did not come from wealth she had better values? Actually statistics show that the “lower” class population tends to commit more crimes. I just felt she was attacking the “privileged class” instead of just telling us what she has experienced. Ironically, “Blue Highways” is evidence to her comment. Heat Moon met a bunch of people from the lower class population and through meeting them he was able to reinvent himself into a better person. I just did not like the way Bell Hooks stated certain things in her passage. I can’t explain it but while reading it, it just frustrated me, unlike “Blue Highways” which intrigued me. Well there was one thing I did agree with in her passage; this paradoxically my pet peeve. “They even would say they hated their parents…. This was especially troubling to me when it seemed that these parents were caring and concerned” As I talk to my friends those words “I hate my parents, repeated over and over again! Now I correlate those words with spoiled, rich children just whining because they don’t get whatever materialistic thing that they had wanted. I feel she generalizes that rich children have caring parents. She associates money with care and that’s what I did not like about this third idea. “It seemed these parents were caring and concerned” But just because they paid for an education doe not mean they were caring but it could be to get them out of their way. But I do understand what she is talking about because I have heard thousands of children with amazing parents out of frustration with them, claim they hate them! Its just childish it does not really apply to just one class.