Who Gets to Be Remembered: Could Bell Hooks Disappear Upon JD Vance’s Release?

What if we took a group of newborns to a domestic island and allowed them to grow entirely under their own and collective influence? Would they grow to create a democracy? Would they have an in-group and an out-group? Most importantly, would racism grow to exist despite equality being established at birth? These questions are important to understand the extent to which white supremacy dominates our culture, our education, and our socialization practices, providing a necessary framework for analyzing works such as Vice President JD Vance’s new book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, which details his adult conversion to Catholicism. This book release doubles as a push for conservative ideals and a method of algorithmic erasure of foundational texts like Communion: The Female Search For Love by philosopher Bell Hooks, which explores feminism and a life-affirming quest for women. 

Framework of Oppression: 

To understand JD Vance’s book release as a structure of white supremacy by overshadowing and algorithmically displacing foundational texts like Communion by bell hooks requires first tracing how similar exclusions were once rationalized through scientific frameworks. The racial hierarchy is a stratification system based on the pseudoscientific belief that some racial groups are superior to others. The hierarchy ranks Black, African, and Aboriginal people at the bottom of the hierarchy, with Whites and Europeans at the top of the hierarchy. The Racial Hierarchy book, written by C. Paul Grandison, explains how our evolutionary past explains why we practice racial discrimination and division. Grandison explains, “Our brains perceive race through the tribal psychological lens we evolved to outcompete each other for group dominance throughout our evolutionary history.” 

From a scientific perspective, craniometry, phrenology, and eugenics were used to claim that skull size and shape determined intelligence and character, often with side-by-side comparisons made between the brains of an Anglo-Saxon, an African, and a monkey craniometry. The MIT Press even dissects Darwinian assertions like Survival of the Fittest that were used to legitimize genocide, establishing that the “higher” races were naturally bound to overtake the “lower. Today, white supremacy is less justified through pseudoscience but is reinforced through cultural narratives, media visibility, and digital algorithms. JD Vance’s political values reinforce existing supremacist structures and risk displacing Hooks’ foundational framework for critiquing the supremacist system. 

Politics in Disguise:

Another question that arises is: “ In what ways does the timing of JD Vance’s book release reflect the growing use of faith as a political tool, and what patterns does it reveal in relation to Bell Hooks?” Current Press releases dissect how the cover of the book depicts a Methodist Church instead of a Catholic Church, which is the motif of his book. From a policy perspective, Vance is using his newfound faith to justify policies and weaponize opposing views, as  The New York Times notes, “he has at times justified the Trump White House’s aggressive deportation campaign with his own interpretation of Catholic doctrine. His views prompted a strong denunciation from leaders in the Vatican and are in opposition to the priorities set by the most high-profile American Catholic, Pope Leo XIV.” Through this example, we watch policy fruition under the guise of religious belief. A standout article, in my opinion, by Brittany Allen at The Literary Hub, however, points out an imperative pattern between JD Vance’s previous book release and philosopher Bell Hooks, stating, “Before Hillbilly Elegy rocked the zeitgeist, hooks published a poetry collection called—wait for it—Appalachian Elegy. Which reflected on her own vexed relationship to her Appalachian roots.” This is coincidentally the second time Vice President JD Vance has released a book with a similar title and motif to black feminist scholar and philosopher Bell Hooks.

Supremacy in the Search Results:

In the current political moment, where faith is mobilized as campaign rhetoric, as we witnessed with James Talorico, and used as a rallying force within organizations like Turning Point USA, it is unsurprising that the Vice President of the United States would release a book centered on Catholic conversion. Appropriating Bell Hooks, who created foundational texts that scholars use to analyze the interlocking systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy, attending both to dominant institutions and the intersecting experiences of those most affected. What is a method of supremacy that we see duplicated all too well? The answer, Erasure. Through Vance’s publications of Hillbilly Elegy and Communion, which his religious conservatism and true American identity motifs directly contrast with those of Bell Hooks, Vance will be able to garner enough publicity to algorithmically change the search engine relationship, which would’ve otherwise highlighted the progressive and honest work of Bell Hooks. 

In her book, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black,  Hooks writes, “Speaking becomes both a way to engage in active self-transformation and a rite of passage where one moves from being object to being subject. Only as subjects can we speak. As objects, we remain voiceless—our beings defined and interpreted by others.” It’s important that black feminist scholar, Bell Hooks, remains prominently visible in search results, as its displacement risks enabling the marginalization and erasure of foundational texts that hold our institutions and those in places of power accountable.