Content Warning: This book contains discussions of racially motivated hate crimes, sexual assault, and other forms of oppression based on race, gender, and class.

hooks opens with the observation that men are more prominent public figures in discussions about race than women. Black women who offer an intersectional point of view—discussing race along with gender and other factors—have been silenced. hooks then identifies Toni Morrison as the source for the Introduction’s title, “Race Talk”, and frames it as a discourse about “neo-colonial white supremacy” (5). hooks adds that when people deny that racism exists, they uphold white supremacy.

hooks describes some of the more overt racism that she and other Black folks have encountered in the past. In her present, which is the 1990s, overt racism has become unfashionable, and subtler methods are used. She argues for voicing concerns about racism but explains that she offers “a vision of revolutionary hope” in her collected essays (7). The essays, written over the course of 20 years, explore class, gender, and additional factors that inform how people dominate others.