hooks discusses the tendency to understand education as key to “racial uplift” (226). She notes, however, that even after Black students graduated with college degrees in record numbers, racism still existed. This is because many Black academics uphold the system of white supremacy. In the Black power movement of the 1960s, people questioned educational systems, and Black students who entered college in the 1970s were ready to challenge the system. For people like Cornel West, college opened up a new intellectual life.

hooks, however, began pursuing an intellectual life in Appalachia before entering college. She found Stanford to be a hostile, racist, sexist, and classist place. There, having an Appalachian or Southern accent was looked down upon. hooks then distinguishes between intellectual work and academic work. The former can be done outside of the academy and a large part of the work is solitary. Academia allows some lower-class people to pursue an intellectual life. However, hooks always admired writers, like James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, more than academics. Some Black academics, she notes, leave the intellectual life to further their academic careers and financial success.

Next, hooks condemns the competitive and hierarchical aspects of academia. She describes working with Cornel West on the essay collection Breaking Bread (2016).