Captain Planet, hooks

The reading, “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” by bell hooks, looks at the issue of Otherness as it affects our culture and the way we view black people, specifically. The first section of the reading focused on the sexual relations between the dominant white male and the ethic Other female. In our society there is a “willingness to transgress racial boundaries within the realm of the sexual that eradicates the fear that one must always conform to the norm to remain ‘safe’” (376). The difference between the white person and the Other is what becomes seductive. hooks gives an example in the article about a group of white Yale jocks talking about ‘their desire to have sex with girls that or ‘Other’ to them. The boys list girls (African American, Native American, and Asian) according to how ‘easy’ they are. hooks says, “To these young males and their buddies, fucking was a way to confront the Other, as well as a way to make themselves over, to leave behind white “innocence” and enter the world of “experience’” (368).Furthermore, for these men “The direct objective was not simply to sexually possess the Other; it was to be changed in some way by the encounter” (368). For white males, by confronting the Other they believe they are ‘accepting’ the Other. That by being involved with girls from another race or nationality they aren’t being racist. We live in a highly hegemonic society though, and although white males may believe they aren’t conforming to the idea of white dominance, the relationship of the oppressor and the oppressed only becomes absent when the ‘desire’ between the two individuals is mutual. This article was written in 1992, over 17 years ago. I want to believe that our society, and the way by which we function as a society, have changed in those years. Inter-racial couples are much more prevalent, and I would like to believe that white males no longer look at ‘Other’ females as ways to ‘enter the world of experience.’