Response to Bell Hooks' Culture to Culture

In the first section, "The Dangers of Falsely Assuming Familiarity," Hook's uses an analogy, " "If you let a dog get close enough, in its eagerness to be close to you, it will lick you in the face." Monica expressed in her blog and presentation that if a person of color allows white people to assume that they have a certain amount of familiarity with them, they forfeited their own right to personal space. I agree with that statement. Throughout history, whites have been notorious for assuming superiority over other races. Before Africans were enslaved and brought to America, Native Americans fell victim to white superiority. They were subjugated and robbed of their own land. I feel that because of history, people of color have a right to keep a safe distance and keep their guards up, but only to a certain extent. People of different races should make an effort to understand on another.
I agree with Hooks' thoughts on how black topics should be discussed by black people and that white people can not "speak" for black people. However, with the idea of a white professor teaching black/African American topics,I do not have a problem with it.If the white professor is coming from a honest and unbiased perspective, I feel that having a non black perspective of African American topics can be beneficial to all students. Cultural learning is a great foundation to begin with in the process of understanding cultural and gender differences and should be mandatory in the classroom. Last semester, I took class on race relations taught by Dr. Troy Allen. Although Dr. Allen is an African American, we taught lessons on other races(White,Asian,Latino)to accommodate his racially mixed class. I felt that he was unbiased and the class was a great learning experience because the course promoted meaningful and insightful conversations between the different races.