My father is German; my mother is African-American. Growing up, I visited my grandparents in Berlin a lot. I would not see any other person of color for three weeks. People would stare. They would say things like, ‘Oh, you look like chocolate – I want to eat you up!’
The very fact that Barack Obama – an African-American – was twice elected to the presidency will always be the lead line in that hard-to-meld, gold-plated paragraph.
Because when I go places and I talk to kids and I talk to parents and I talk to athletes all over, and they look at my story and they see a person, African-American or not, they see something that they can relate to.
I’ve had some Democrat African-American leaders tell me they’re really not all that comfortable with Obama as the lead at the MLK festivities ’cause he’s not down for the struggle. He does not have that in his roots.
I consciously think about the ethnicity of every character that I create and cast. But one thing that is equally important is quality representation. It’s not enough to put an African-American in there, a female in there, a gay character in there: How significant is their contribution? Can they drive the story?
At the very least, you must make the Internet free in areas that are poverty-stricken. Without the Internet and access to information, poverty-stricken households will never catch up to households above the poverty line – throwing the African-American community deeper into the stone ages.
I really truly respect and honor the fact that the majority of my district is African-American and that I have to make sure that I surround myself with people with that lens.
I just want to make sure that I’m taking roles that are positive, real, honest reflections of African-Americans because I do think the media can put African-American women in the background. Then, unfortunately, what happens is, subconsciously, our culture begins to assess that as reality.
There’s always some difference between your Latino and African-American communities. But we definitely have more similarities than differences.
I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.
We are carrying collectively a lot of trauma, especially those of us in the African-American community. And if we’re not careful, it’ll overtake us, and we’ll self-destruct.
I got my dog back, in African-American language, your dog means your passion, your fire.
We incarcerate more African-American men today than were slaves in 1850.
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else’s story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn’t have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don’t even have to be magical.
The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King.
It’s profound to watch a little African-American girl light up when she raps as George Washington and she realizes that Washington’s story is her story. That this history belongs to all of us.
You know, I’m an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they – they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to.
As an African-American, I think the way I treated others affected how people treated me. If people do attack you in certain ways, you can focus on it and be vengeful in your approach or take the high road – get over it.
