Hooks feels that the perilous times of the civil rights movement should never be taken for granted, especially by those who were born in the aftermath of the movement's gains. "A young black man can’t understand what it means to have something he’s never been denied,’ Hooks told "U.S. News & World Report". "I can’t make them understand the mental relief I feel at the rights we have. It almost infuriates me that people don’t understand what integration has done for this country."