er that wounds, hurts, tortures, is a reality that disrupts the fantasy of whiteness as representing goodness (Hooks 340-341).
Hooks finds that blacks do not simply invert the stereotype so that white becomes bad and black becomes good, and indeed it would seem more that blacks have a certain ambiguity about the issue on both sides, seeking in part to emulate whites while at the same time accepting the idea that black is inherently inferior. The Other is not merely something different but something that represents a fantasy to be both admired and despised because it is unreachable. Hooks discusses his own childhood and how he was taught to understand that white represented power so that he had to recognize this in order to be safe. The development of the idea of the Other is more complex than it might seem at first.
Hooks notes how both black and white today believe that racism has been eliminated, a myth they accept in part because it is conveni
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