Words matter. These are the best Black Quotes from famous people such as Pink, Charles Barkley, Chris Rock, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Niger Innis, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When I first appeared, people couldn’t figure out whether I was gay, straight, black, white or whatever, and I loved that. I loved the fact it scares people.
But when I see a story on welfare on television, they only show black people.
I was bused to a school in Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn in 1972. I was one of the first black kids in the history of the school.
There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions – not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.
After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing firearms.
What we’re doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They’re not just mythic heroes.
I try to speak my points of view about black America, and how I feel about black men and the role that black men should play in their lives with their children and in their lives with their women.
Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.
The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?
When I introduced a black soldier, Lt. Flap, in 1971, the Stars and Stripes banned the strip. They were having racial problems and thought it would increase the tensions.
The album ‘Hoodie SZN’ is about the result of where I come from: it gave me this black heart. And the black heart represents depression.
I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.
Now we have black and white elected officials working together. Today, we have gone beyond just passing laws. Now we have to create a sense that we are one community, one family. Really, we are the American family.
If I’m going to work, I put black jeans on, a T-shirt, a shirt, and a jacket.
If you want to see a black hole tonight, tonight just look in the direction of Sagittarius, the constellation. That’s the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and there’s a raging black hole at the very center of that constellation that holds the galaxy together.
Even as someone who’s labeled a conservative – I’m a Republican I’m black, I’m heading up this organization in the Reagan administration – I can say that conservatives don’t exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they’re welcome.
I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.
How do you observe something you can’t see? This is the basic question of somebody who’s interested in finding and studying black holes. Because black holes are objects whose pull of gravity is so intense that nothing can escape it, not even light, so you can’t see it directly.
Black Lives Matter started from a post that I put on Facebook after the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, just trying to process what had happened and wanting to find community around being in a lot of grief and having a lot of rage.
Just simple things – I like black and white, monochrome; I like suits.
I always tried to stand out as a ref. I wore a long-sleeve black Under Armour t-shirt so that you knew I was the cool ref as opposed to the old dude.
My mixed-race background made me a broad person, able to relate to different cultures. But any woman of colour, even a mixed colour, is seen as black in America. So that’s how I regard myself.
It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.
At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that’s good.
All my life I had a rapport with black caddies.
Black culture is something I don’t relate to much at all.
When I sing, I don’t want them to see that my face is black. I don’t want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.
I wasn’t shy, but I was really hyper. Nobody got my sense of humor. I was a black skater kid.
Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.
Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative.
However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.
The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.
I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. The danger is another black.
Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.
Black and white creates a strange dreamscape that color never can.
I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother’s a black woman, South African Xhosa woman… and my father’s Swiss, from Switzerland.
Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.
Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on.
All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.
What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?
When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.
Showtime has given new, young filmmakers – black, white, across the board – an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
Even though it’s called Music Of Black Origin, it’s not just music for black people. Music is for everybody. I think it’s good that black music is acknowledged, and it’s open for lots of artists, including white artists who have been inspired by black musical heritage.
Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.
Black cats cross my path all the time. I’ll break a mirror. I have no regard for superstition.
Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves.
I think it’s good that YouTube decided that they really want to showcase Black talent.
To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
I’m a TV junkie, so it’s hard to choose just one. Currently I’m a slave to ‘Black Sails,’ ‘Vikings,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Mindy Project.’
I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.
We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.
Rap was started by black people and, thus, is at the foundation of black culture. So people cannot always wrap their minds around someone like me being inspired by it. But if you listen to the things we’re saying, they’re authentically us.
I just have more Yves Saint Laurent in my closet, but it is pretty much the same – I just wear black almost 365 days of the year. I am married to it.
Deadwood lies at the northern tip of the Black Hills, where the land is ancient and rubbed smooth by time. The Black Hills are more rugged at their southern extremity, where bare granite forms pinnacles and spires.
I used to drive up and down Pacific Coast Highway in this black Porsche, and I had seen a couple of accidents on the highway involving Porsches. I realized if you’re in any kind of head on accident in one of those cars, they’re going to get you out of it with a can opener, one of those Jaws of Life.
As much as I’m a black person from America, I’m a black person from Africa, too.
Madame Walker selected Indianapolis as the headquarters for her growing business more than a century ago in 1910 because of its central location and thriving black business community.
I do feel in 2018 that pro wrestling has gone in such a different direction. Before, things were so black and white; now, it’s shades of grey. It’s not so much good guys and bad guys: there are people who are put in situations who do the right or wrong things, but people react to them like they are stars.
Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.
Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn’t matter how good you are.
Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can’t drop that. It’s reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.
And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, ‘love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria.
As for facial hair, I think I decided it was a good look after graduate school. I always shave it myself and trim my own beard. I change the look depending on the role. For ‘Million Dollar Baby,’ I had no facial hair. For ‘Men in Black 3,’ I had no facial hair but did wear a wig.
The Holocaust, taken by itself, is a black hole. To look at it directly is to be swallowed up by it.
I was bullied at school. The black girl in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in 1973. There’d be 8 or 10 boys; I would count them as I was running.
I love Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Guns N’ Roses and AC/DC.
Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It’s a love note for our people, but it’s also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us.
My mother is black, from Grenada, so my blackness was always there, but It wasn’t until I started hanging with the upperclassmen black actors at my high school that I really got my roots in being a black American, which is a distinctly different identity and experience.
Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.
If the KKK was smart enough, they would’ve created gangsta rap because it’s such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.
I’m a big fan of ‘Orphan Black,’ and to be one of the original cast members is something that will always be dear to me.
I lived and grew up in the black and white period of photojournalism.
In my real life, I’m a Black Lives Matter social justice activist, and so it was incredibly interesting to me to play somebody coming from the totally opposite side, whose beliefs are as deeply entrenched – as deeply felt, and given as much gravity, as I give my beliefs.
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.
Once a star dies, it’s gone forever. There are no new stars to take its place. Eventually, there will be no stars, and the universe will turn black. That really will be the end.
When people meet me in person, they’re usually surprised at how petite I am because there’s this idea that because I’m black, I just look a certain way.
Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.
My being a black woman is not a deficit. It is a strength. Because I could not be where I am had I not overcome so many other barriers. Which means you know I’m relentless, you know I’m persistent, and you know I’m smart.
Black culture is a fight. We want to hold on to what we are, but sometimes the things that we are can be totally negative. You have to think: can’t we try something new and not be seen as suspect?
It’s challenging to find self-love when there’s confusion and you’re living in a world that’s seemingly very binary and black and white.
Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.
‘Top Boy,’ for some people, was very controversial because it seemed to be portraying black people in a certain light that they thought to be stereotypical. However, what I would say is that the writer went and lived in Hackney in East London for a long time and did his research really well.
Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down – it keeps us from growing.
The Muslim world just doesn’t believe that skin color is all that important. Obama may be half-black, but he’s still all-Western, according to them. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black, white or green – if you’re not a devotee of Muhammad, you don’t matter.
I make and wear black and white for myself because it centers me.
My goal was to tell a dialogue between high fashion and streetwear. So, the name Off-White, in my mind, is between black and white. So, that middle ground is a mixture between both genres of fashion.
Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.
I think race has been a burden for black Americans. Being Muslim has also been a challenge because so many people do not understand Islam.
Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
I’m comfortably asocial – a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.
I don’t think there is enough understanding of how diverse black America actually is.
To rally every black sheep is my goal.
I dug the idea that I was being perceived as the black sheep of my family, but for me, it was like, I was a rebel, and that to me was most important.
I’ve said numerous times the hardest job in America isn’t being a professional athlete. It’s not being a matador or having some job that puts your life at risk. The hardest job in America is being black, because it’s the one thing you can’t outrun.
I disagree with the prevailing point of view of some black leaders that special treatment for blacks is acceptable.
I got my black belt First Dan at the age of 12 and I was the youngest in my training centre. I practised karate till a few years ago and it has helped enhance my flexibility, stamina and mental toughness.
Bob Marley performed the ‘One Love Peace’ concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There’s always been that in black music and culture in general. It’s no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what’s going on in black life. It’s not unusual for hip-hop.
A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation’s greatness.
People have black skin, people have brown skin. I have both.
I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.
I know of at least two black women who are billionaires: Sheila Johnson, who co-founded BET, and Oprah Winfrey. And I know of hundreds of black women whose net worth is over $1 million.
A black hole really is an object with very rich structure, just like Earth has a rich structure of mountains, valleys, oceans, and so forth. Its warped space whirls around the central singularity like air in a tornado.
High blood pressure is a major health crisis in the black community.
The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.
I do want to be a representative of the African community, and I want to hold myself and dress myself in a way that reflects that. I want black kids to see me and think, ‘Okay, he’s carrying himself as a black man, and that’s how a black man should carry himself.’
I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.
The greatest untapped reservoir of raw material in the history of our game is the black race.
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.
When a black person kills a black person, the media ignores it completely.
I love black and white and very simple and classic clothes.
As a kid we moved around a fair bit as a family. It was difficult to make friends but sport helped. Once people saw you kick a football it broke down barriers. Instead of being the new skinny black kid you were the kid everyone wanted on their team.
Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me.
Black and white means photography to me. It’s much easier to take a good color photograph, but you can get more drama into a black and white one.
I’m very black and white about what I like or don’t like, and I’ve always been that way.
After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.
I can’t be in an environment that is not conducive to me as a black woman.
If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.
Every man’s closet should be dark pair of blue jeans, a black jean, and a mid wash jean.
I like the way black looks. I think I look better in darker clothes. And maybe the fact that I wear black so much makes me more aware of putting people at ease. The black is sort of the bad-guy guise, so I work overtime to make people comfortable.
Some people believe tarot cards are a form of black magic or senseless new age mysticism but for me they are a practical way of talking directly to the universe.
Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.
I wore black until I was twenty-five, like many young people. Everybody did. It was crazy! But now, getting older, I think color does me good.
We all want to be identified as someone cool, and I have struggled with repping where I’m from and my heritage before. It’s part of growing pains. But when people see me being proud of what I am – and they are what I am too – it makes them proud. That’s why I try to represent my Asian and my black side.
I like bold colors but usually wear black.
Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years’ worth of education.
As a black man, sometimes you can’t tell if what you’re seeing has underlying bigotry, or it’s a normal conversation and you’re being paranoid. That dynamic in itself is unsettling. I admit sometimes I see race and racism when its not there.
My style is definitely schizophrenic; it does change from day to day a lot. It depends on my mood: sometimes I’ll be going through a girly, childlike stage and wear a pretty lace dress with a bow in my hair. Then sometimes I’ll be moody and just wear black.
When I was in my 20s, I was out of control in terms of what I would do to defend my vision. There are black film-makers and storytellers who take a back seat to just get it done. It’s good, but it’s not right there. It’s been compromised.
An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world’s leading democracy.
I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a ‘brother.’
When I was saying, ‘White people go to hell,’ I never had trouble finding a publisher. But when I say, ‘Black and white unite and fight, destroy capitalism,’ then you suddenly become unreasonable.
I’m an athlete and I’m black, and a lot of black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate. But I’m paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, ‘You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.’
In the beginning it was all black and white.
I can get a black eye, a bloody nose. I can have a bad day in the gym. At the end of the day, I don’t have a bad payday, and I don’t have a bad night under the lights… I get bumps, bruises… but I don’t have a bad night.
I wear black because I’m comfortable in it. But then in the summertime when it’s hot I’m comfortable in light blue.
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Life isn’t black or white, it’s all sorts of shades of grey.
A Black man should be more independent and depend on himself for his freedom and not to take it for granted that someone would lead him to it. The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves.
We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.
Weapons of mass destruction aren’t pulled out of a black hat like a white rabbit at a magic show. They’re produced in factories. There’s science and technology involved. They’re not produced in a hole in the ground or in a basement.
‘A Different World,’ for me, was in a lot of ways responsible for me going to college. I wanted to go to a black college, and I wanted to get out of Los Angeles. It’s just a natural part of all of our journeys, that idea of leaving home.
When I was running the Troubadour, there was this transition from the classic singer/songwriter Jackson Browne types to bands like Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, and Fear. Those are just some that come to mind. Oh, and Adam Ant! The Fear fans wanted to ‘crush’ the Ants. These guys hated each other.
Black men don’t like to be called ‘boys,’ but women accept being called ‘girls.’
Being born gay, black, and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay black female is.
The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.
During my childhood, Washington was a segregated city, and I lived in the midst of a poor black neighborhood. Life on the streets was often perilous. Indoor reading was my refuge, and twice a week, I made the hazardous bicycle trek to the central library at Seventh and K streets to stock up on supplies.
Being part of social movements like Black Lives Matter or organizations like NAACP, or any group representing a cause, gives you more resources, knowledge, and power. They can help you use your voice.
Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
I have a deadly disease called Sickle Cell Anemia that I was born with that affects millions of others – primarily in the Black and Latino cultures. I feel I can inspire others with this Sickle Cell disease to be strong and believe in themselves.
I sit my three sons down and say, ‘Listen to me. When the police stop you, immediately comply. Don’t walk away, don’t smart-mouth; get your hands up and get down on the ground.’ If you’re not black, you might not have to have that conversation, but I go over and over it with them because I don’t want that phone call.
I like technology, but ‘Black Mirror’ is more what the consequences are, and it doesn’t tend to be about technology itself: it tends to be how we use or misuse it. We’ve not really thought through the consequences of it.
Above all, avoid the Indiana Jones fedora. It’s very yesterday, and if you wear a black one, you might be mistaken for an Orthodox Jew.
I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’
It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.
I never had a black teacher or lecturer, I never once met a black British person who held any sort of professional or managerial role.
We rarely know what motivates somebody in their work, and it’s usually a particular moment in their life. For me, that moment is my brother’s incarceration and the ways in which this country has decided to neglect, abuse, and sometimes torture people with severe mental illness, especially if they’re black.
Pittsburgh is a very hard city, especially if you’re black.
When I first ran for governor… I had to stand up for segregation or be defeated, but I never insulted black people by calling them inferior.
The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.
I have seven brothers and sisters, and I’m the only one who looks white because my mother has had children by all black men, and then my father has children with other women as well.
The idea of an e-book has been around since the late 1970s, when researchers at Xerox PARC got on the case. Their prototype used millions of little magnetic particles, black on one side and white on the other, loosely embedded in the surface of a soft sheet of rubber.
I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me – being mixed race – because casting directors tended to be very like, ‘OK, are you Hispanic for this role?’ ‘Or is she going to be African American?’
I’m hoping someday that some kid, black or white, will hit more home runs than myself. Whoever it is, I’d be pulling for him.
There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.
And the whole thing is that you’re treated like a step-child. Here it was down here, everything in the black, because they were stealing, basically. Stealing from us old country boys down here.
Black people are the only ones told to love our oppressors. I hate that. We’ve been loving our oppressors for a long time, and nothing has changed – that love has to be reciprocated.
It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.
I think sports has done a disservice for a lot of black kids thinking they can only be successful through athletics and entertainment. I want them to know they can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, fireman, police officers, etc.
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.
Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
The movement for black lives isn’t just about black people. Black liberation has never just been about black people. It’s been about a fight for our humanity, for our dignity.
The plunder of black communities is not a bump along the road, but it is, in fact, the road itself that you can’t have in America without enslavement, without Jim Crow, terrorism, everything that came after that.
The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people – to black people.
The fishnets on Black Canary never bothered me: they fit her character. It’s the same for me with the bikini… most people don’t wear a lot of clothes in these stories, and it’s a big part of what makes her instantly recognizable. Do I want her in a raincoat? Not really.
‘Gods of Wheat Street’ has been described as an Aboriginal ‘Neighbours’ or ‘Home and Away.’ But on set, we were calling it ‘Black to the Rafters.’
Colour is what gives jewels their worth. They light up and enhance the face. Nothing is more elegant than a black skirt and sweater worn with a sparkling multi-stoned necklace.
If I could find anything blacker than black, I’d use it.
There were days I could barely struggle into a size 46 or 48, months of larges and XXLs, and endless rounds of leggings with the elastic at the waist stretched to its limit and beyond – topped with the fashion equivalent of a tea cozy. And always black, because I was in mourning for my slimmer self.
A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.
The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.
Black Lives Matter is the ultimate divisive movement. They aren’t shy about what they don’t like, which is western civilization, capitalism, and the rule of law. They really dislike the police, and certainly get the credit for the war between black men and police.
It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.
Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media – of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we’ve already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We’re out of ‘affirmative actions’ of all kinds.
One dress I love – for me, it’s a little edgy – it’s sleeveless. It’s black and it’s leather. I’ve worn it on TV.
I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated, that we are indeed messy, that we do our best with what we’ve been given. We come into the world exactly like you. It’s just that there are circumstances in the culture that are dictated and put on our lives that we have to fight against.
We don’t live in a world that’s black and white.
I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas.
I think it’s because it was an emotional story, and emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Colour is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.
No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.
The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it’s been a quest since then to define who we are.
Do not consider that to be wealth which is hoarded away, for how is it better than sand gathered from the nearest heap? Nor that which comes in from men who groan at their taxes: for the gold that is wrung from tears is of base alloy and black.
When I did ‘Good Guys Wear Black,’ I had a lot of dialogue in that movie.
The brain is the black box: the final frontier.
I was born on an island with 96 percent of the people black. But all the power and the economy was in the hands of white people who only formed four per cent.
Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.
Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.
People want to call me racist for doing the Bon Qui Qui character, and I’m like, ‘Look, Bon Qui Qui is a representation of a hood chick. That’s it.’ There are lots of hood chicks out there: some are black, some are Mexican, some are Salvadorian, and some are white.
Obviously black matches with everything.
I feel the feminist movement has excluded black women. You cannot talk about being black and a woman within traditional feminist dialogue.
After Jackie Robinson the most important black in baseball history is Reggie Jackson, I really mean that.
‘Moonlight’ is a story that hasn’t been told. Whether placed as queer black cinema or urban male cinema, the lack of coming-of-age films featuring people like Chiron and set in places like inner-city Miami is pronounced and unfortunate.
Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you’re a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I’ve visited Africa, and I’ve got news for everyone: I’m not an African.
I’m doing a film called ‘Black Mass’ where I play James Bulger. The reason to play him is obvious to me. He’s a fascinating character. It’s not like anything I’ve done before on that level. I’m very excited to slide into that skin for a little bit.
Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don’t know that I’m most people’s definition of what a black person is. I’m mixed, yes, but in the world I’m defined as black before I’m defined white. I’ve never been called white.
I had a vision – and I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened – the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed in streams – and I heard a voice saying, ‘Such is your luck, such are you called to see, and let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bear it.’
It’s sometimes better to have a father figure to rebel against than nothing, than just a black hole or an absence.
I just feel Black women, we get slept on a lot and people don’t recognize our greatness in our curls and in chocolate skin.
My sexuality is not black and white. I’m a gay man who has occasionally drifted. I am not bi. I’ve had perfectly pleasant romances with women, but they weren’t sustainable. My passion wasn’t there. I would always be looking at guys.
There was certainly, like, a rebellious, like, youthful rage in me. And there was also the fact of no getting away from fact that I am white, and you know, this is predominantly black music, you know.
Feminists must denounce the use of white insecurity – whether in relation to white womanhood, white neighborhoods, white politics, or white wealth – to justify the brutal assaults against black people of all genders.
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
In the black culture, certain kids are given nicknames that they roll with forever; the nicknames outweigh their real names. I’m one of those scenarios.
My favorite outfit is baggy black corduroy pants and a baggy T-shirt.
Historically, black music has influenced other cultures and other genres and created other genres.
What I want to do is play roles as a black man, instead of playing black man’s roles. You know?
Ebonics – or black English, as I prefer to call it – is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.
I like black, because for me it is a very happy color.
We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.
I’ve never been to Ukraine, but I have heard it’s very dangerous for a black man. There are crazy racists who have already sent me death threats.
If you’re black in this country, if you’re a woman in this country, if you are any minority in this country at all, what could possibly possess you to vote Republican?
In the locker room, and when I’m with my friends, we use racial slurs… What I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me what’s appropriate and inappropriate.
I know that meeting a black woman with a love for hockey is a bit like stumbling upon a unicorn in the woods… or a unicorn anywhere. I’m sure it’d be just as surreal finding a unicorn in downtown Chicago. But here I am.
It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption absolute of the principle that no man, born red, black or white, can be the property of his fellow man.
The first black president will be a politician who is black.
It’s not hard to get your way when it’s your way or the highway. People either follow suit or they’re not around. I don’t really like the sound of that, ’cause that sounds like a temper tantrum. I’m just very black and white when it comes to my business. There’s really no gray area.
The black masses must demand and refuse to accept nothing less than that proportionate percentage of the political spoils such as jobs, elective offices and appointments… They must reject the shameful racial tokenism that characterizes the political life of America today.
Medical ethics is a fascinating discipline, as it deals with issues replete with complex philosophical, moral, and ethical considerations that are rarely black or white.
Identity is becoming more dependent on what people are willing subscribe to and less dependent on objective criteria such as skin colour or where they’re born. Ways of identifying blackness are no longer black or white. It’s not a case of us or them, you can now be us and them; like them but different.
We must create a committee to address the long-standing discrimination against black people in America.
The Great Depression, they come out with the New Deal, black people didn’t have access to those government stimulus packages. The New Deal set up what is known as the modern-day middle class. We didn’t have access to programs – the G.I. Bill, Social Security, home loans – none of that.
Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.
You can be poor, middle class, or rich – it doesn’t matter. The black card will still confer upon you an entire history of oppression, even if you’ve never been oppressed. Flash the black card, and most white people will cower.
My favorite color is black.
I would say things like ‘I am the greatest! I’m pretty! If you talk jive, you’ll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I’m pretty!’ When white people heard me talking like this, some said, ‘That black man talks too much. He’s bragging.’
I’m like Johnny Cash. I only wear black.
We need someone who will stand up and speak up and speak out for the people who need help, for people who are being discriminated against. And it doesn’t matter whether they are black or white, Latino, Asian or Native American, whether they are straight or gay, Muslim, Christian, or Jews.
I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black, and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.
When Black Lives Matter started, it was polarizing.
The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.
I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.
Black musicians were imitating speech cadences, and Kerouac was imitating the black musicians’ breath cadences on their horns and brought it back to speech. It always was speech rhythms or cadences as far as the ear that Kerouac was developing. All passed through black music.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.
Segregation was wrong when it was forced by white people, and I believe it is still wrong when it is requested by black people.
Life is about choices. Some we regret, some were proud of. Some will haunt us forever. ‘Black Rain’ was very much about choices. The message – we are what we chose to be.
Slavery didn’t break up the black families as much as liberal welfare rules.
I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor – and it’s one that I enjoy extremely.
Ultimately the white man should leave the United States and the black people should go back to Africa.
Every red stripe in that flag represents the black man’s blood that has been shed.
We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. Many things have been said about me which are wrong, and which white and black persons here, who stood by me through the war, can contradict.
In interviews with dozens of black advisers, friends, donors and allies, few said they had ever heard Mr. Obama muse on the experience of being the first black president of the United States, a role in which every day he renders what was once extraordinary almost ordinary.
I’m black, I don’t feel burdened by it and I don’t think it’s a huge responsibility. It’s part of who I am. It does not define me.
Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.
Republicans and blacks had an unlikely alliance around ‘max black’ after the 1990 census. By concentrating black voters in some districts, the strategy elected a record number of black congressmen in 1992. But the remaining ‘bleached’ districts were more likely to elect white Republicans.
I’m hot on the Jewish book club circuit. How many black authors do you know who can say that?
A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.
I was always the black sheep of the family and always told that I was dumb, and I had a low IQ and did badly in school.
Some things you never really fully understand unless you are actually black and you experience how it feels when someone treats you differently based on your skin colour.
You are a black goddess when you come out the salon.
The criminal justice system in the United States is designed to do two things really well: to railroad black and brown bodies into prison, and to keep police officers out of it.
Leather pants are my guilty fashion pleasure. I have at least 10 pairs in navy, red, white, dusty pink, grey, suede and black.
A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.
If you’re doing black music, you should have a core understanding of where that comes from, and the fundamentals – so you’re not some bozo thinking you’re doing something new.
My black hero is and always will be Martin Luther King, not just because of the strength of his oratory but because his vision was very much the reality that I’d come to take for granted.
The guy that I worked on ‘Thriller ‘ was a genius and he was 20 years old, but it was like working with a gifted 10-year-old. The guy who I worked on with ‘Black Or White’ was crazy. Michael had gone mad.
There are thousands of ways to make people laugh – satire, black comedy, slapstick.
The only way we are going to get diversity is if the demographics of the decision-makers change… The odd-token bone thrown is not going to do it. Don’t pat yourself on the back because you made that black drama; that’s not diversity. It’s got to be baked into the foundation of where the ideas flow from.
I accept you, and you get the same respect from me whether you are black, white, gay straight, Asian, bisexual, Australian, tall, fat, whatever it is. We are all people, and I look at the people of the world the same way, as my brothers and sisters.
When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.
We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.
‘American Horror’ goes for a very specific kind of Seventies suburban downer ambience – ‘Flowers in the Attic’ paperbacks, Black Sabbath album covers and late-night flicks like ‘Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.’ It even has ‘Go Ask Alice’-era urban legends.
Why is she Mrs. C.J. Walker? It really was a matter of her trying to insist that people respect her, because during that time, white people would call any black woman ‘Sally.’ ‘Aunt Sally.’ So this was like… you can’t call me that.
Black women are supposed to be ‘strong,’ but the burden of carrying our race and carrying our families adds the pressure.
I think that, as a black girl, you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn’t accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features or that you shouldn’t have a voice or that you aren’t smart.
The human brain works as a binary computer and can only analyze the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can’t be easily defined in zeros and ones.
I wanted people not to care about whether you were gay, straight, black, white, transgender, whatever it may be… That being said, there’s more work to be done… I still want to change the world, absolutely.
The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
We’ve never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.
Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time.
When you go to an art museum, the thing you’re least likely to encounter is a picture of a black person. When it comes to ideas about art and about beauty, the black figure is absent.
Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
Even the humble black grandmother, who sings in the church choir and struggles to raise a grandchild abandoned to her care, must assert ideological liberalism in order to make others comfortable about her blackness.
I do consider myself part of black history.
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
I have black friends, but I don’t just hang out with black kids. I might pull up with Indian kids, white kids, black kids, whatever.
I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin’ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.
For reasons probably related to the popular vision of Albert Einstein and, also, the threat posed by black holes in comic books and science fiction, our gravitational wave discoveries have had an amazing public impact.
My plays are for the kind of black people who relate to funk music, to Parliament-Funkadelic. When those guys get out of a spaceship – the idea that black people are from outer space, there’s a poetic truth to that. We are this vast people.
Black Rock gives us all a chance to heal, to become ourselves.
To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.
Many people see my early work simply as portraits of black and brown people. Really, it’s an investigation of how we see those people and how they have been perceived over time.
Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
I don’t judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they’re a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.
What I really feel is necessary is that the black people in this country wil have to upset this apple cart. We can no longer ignore the fact that America is not the… land of the free and the home of the brave.
Before me, everything was black or navy blue or gray or brown or beige, things like that, for daytime. I began using shocking pink and ice blue and all kinds of bright colors. And I dyed furs.
By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond ‘black’ and ‘white,’ we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.
The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.
That little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
‘The Ballad of Black Tom’ was written, in part, during the latest round of arguments about H. P. Lovecraft’s legacy as both a great writer and a prejudiced man. I grew up worshipping the guy, so this issue felt quite personal to me.
Here’s my definition of a great beach read – a fabulous story that sucks me in like a black hole and when it’s over, it jettisons my bones across the galaxy with a hair on fire mission to convince everyone I know that they must read that book or they will die.
Throwing on a black dress with black tights, cute booties, a great coat and throw a scarf over it. I think simple accessories and, if you want to make a pop, a great red lip.
When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are – usurpers and petty tyrants.
I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.
There’s always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself – whether it’s Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. – because that’s the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
When I was a kid, like 14 or 15, I played with the waiters from the hotel, ’cause that was the best game. And these guys, they’d let me play. And they were black guys.
Every black film feels like it’s Tyler Perry, and that just needs to stop. But people seem to slowly be looking for what else is out there – ‘Is there something else besides this type of humor?’ ‘I’m tired of seeing men in dresses.’
The middle of ‘America’s Women’ is about the Civil War, and how women, black and white, confronted slavery and abolition. As in every other period of crisis, the rules of sexual decorum were suspended due to emergency.
You know, I don’t play the race card a lot. I’m half-black, half-white, and I’m proud of – my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didn’t raise me as a black man. She didn’t raise me as a white guy.
We have to thank the members of the Romantic movement for the sober colours of suits. It was their love of the Gothic that put us in grey and black but the suit stuck.
There’s a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we’ve arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.
Knowing that I was potentially going to be the first black Bachelorette actually held me back from wanting to do it. With the first, there’s always so much pressure. And I knew I was going to be new to the audience as a lead for a number of reasons – being over 30, being a career woman, and also being black.
I hope everybody enjoys our input on ‘Black Water’ – it sure was a lot of fun getting to record it.
I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development.
Back in the 1970s, Kodak tried to give $25m to a black civil rights organisation in Rochester, New York. The company’s shareholders rose up in arms: making this politically charged offering wasn’t the reason they had entrusted Kodak with their money. The donation was withdrawn.
In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons.
Good can exist in bad, and bad can exist in good. It’s not black and white.
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.
I started making work that I assumed would be far too garish, far too decadent, far too black for the world to care about. I, to this day, am thankful to whatever force there is out there that allows me to get away with painting the stories of people like me.
Having Black hair is unique in that Black women change up styles a lot. You can walk down one street block in New York City and see 10 different hairstyles that Black women are wearing: straight curls, short cuts, braids – we really run the gamut.
Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.
Although humans see reality in colour, for me, black and white has always been connected to the image’s deeper truth, to its most hidden meaning.
The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black people, to black bodies in this country, the soul as we construe it is damaged, too – the mind is damaged, too.
You can change the look of an outfit so easily by changing the kind of jewellery you wear. If you have a basic outfit on – a black sweater and skirt or a simple black dress – you can go from the office to a cocktail party at night just by changing your jewellery. It helps if you change your shoes as well.
We are all somewhere or the other a little grey, not black and white. We have our imperfections.
Rhythm and blues started even before phonograph records were being produced because black people entertained themselves. It wasn’t done for money. It was done for entertainment. Most white people didn’t know anything about this because prejudice kept them from ever seeing what was going on.
Everybody needs to show respect to each others’ ways and the cultural life that you get on this planet. Don’t get caught up on ‘I’m brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.’ You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492? All these names we’re using now are just an illusion made to keep us fighting each other.
I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.
Any colour – so long as it’s black.
I grew up in an environment in Birmingham that was really multicultural, with black kids, Irish kids, Indian kids.
For Black Music Month, I would definitely want to celebrate Isaac Hayes.
Learn to love being black.
Martin Luther King was a misguided leader. He worked to be recognized as the leader of black America when what black America needs isn’t a leader, it is education.
My school was 90 percent white, but 90 percent of the kids I played with were black. So I got the best of both worlds. I think that is where my comedy developed.
Atheistic evolution isn’t an intelligent belief, as atheists would have the black community believe.
Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ’cause it’s life or death for real.
You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we’re presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated – not nearly as black and white as we’re led to believe.
I made my way on to a grey list, a black list even. That’s something I’m very proud of, actually.
‘Roots’ was a massive responsibility because it is this foundational text in the States and it also resonates fairly strongly with pretty much any black community globally.
I used to own an island in the Seychelles and had a big boat there and one day I came across some Somali pirates who were passing by on their way to re-provision their boat. They didn’t even acknowledge me – which is unheard of among sailors – and it was like looking into the eyes of a black mamba.
I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
Systemically, there hasn’t been an oppression more overt and long-lasting than economic oppression against black people and minorities in this country.
I’m black, so I should be able to play a ‘thug?’ No. Hello. Open your mind. I’m a person that believes in breaking barriers.
On ‘Black Ben Carson,’ I had strict no melody thing. I wanted straight, raw, rugged noise music.
Diversity doesn’t mean black and white only.
The strange proposition that black intellectuals – regardless of their training – are ‘race experts’ mainly because they are black is naive and potentially dangerous.
Everybody nowadays rhymes, but out of the people that really, really do it well, it’s still a small community of artists. We all tend to be in the same circles – people like my Wu-Tang brothers, or Black Thought from The Roots.
A lot of my success comes from black music. It’s something I’m very proud of.
I always say I was a liberal, but I wasn’t active in politics. I just assumed I was a liberal because I was black and I was a woman. And I know now that sounds really foolish, but I had different priorities.
That old black magic has me in its spell, That old black magic that you weave so well; Icy fingers up and down my spine, The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
We celebrate pride every day of the year – whether it’s black pride, whether LGBTQIA + pride, whether it’s the pride of being a woman, whether it’s the pride of being a mother, we should be proud of who we are each and every day.
Color television! Bah, I won’t believe it until I see it in black and white.
Blacks’ problems lie not in the heads of white people but rather in the wasted and incompletely fulfilled lives of too many black people.
My kids are the reason I continue to strive for something better. They know – as kids who are Muslim, Somali, black Americans – that they’ve always been part of a struggle and that change isn’t easy.
Woody Allen has a wonderful line: ‘Today I’m a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?’ That’s very important to know – that you have the moment, then you lose the moment. You have to see your chances, you have to take them, and you also have to see when you don’t have chances to take.
A mirror reflects what you see, and a black mirror shows the dark side of it.
Maybe black and white is the best medium for landscapes, I don’t know.
The American dream comes from opportunity. The opportunity comes from our founding principles, our core values that’s held together and protected by the Constitution. Those ideas are neither Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, white, or black. Those are American ideologies.
I realize that I’m black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody’s wish.
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death’s wing flashed ahead.
God is on my side, and that’s all I need. I get up in the morning, I pray to God. I don’t pray to the president, the governor, the mayor, no black caucus, no this and that. I pray to God, and that’s the end of it.
Seattle is like a global gumbo, a melting pot with all kinds of people – the rich, the poor, white people, some Chinese, Filipino, Jewish and black people – they’re all here.
Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.
Every now and then you get a nice Jewish kid who likes black people and they would come in, and it would be a stream of them, and have black friends and really feel the black struggle on the acting tip and it’s a reason why all of us are not dying in the movie.
After all, the wool of a black sheep is just as warm.
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but black and white films still hold an affectionate place in my heart; they have an incomparable mystique and mood.
Black is a great colour when it comes to being safe and classy. It looks great on any body type and can be paired with anything. So when in doubt, go for black.
The question that I started off with was, I thought, very simple. It was just ‘Is there a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way?’ But one of the things I love about science is that you always end up with new questions.
People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That’s the rhetorical position we occupy.
My essentials are skinny jeans, loose-fitting tees, big jumpers, and the leather jacket. Everything is black or blue – I don’t own anything colorful.
Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
The March on Washington was a March for Jobs and Freedom. There are still too many people who are unemployed or underemployed in America – they’re black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American.
All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own efforts.
I don’t think it’s up to black athletes to get involved in political or racial issues.
For me, Africa is a land of light and contrast. Black and white is the best way to express the solitary emotion and vitality of wildlife.
The internet to me is kind of like a black hole, and I never really go on it.
The Black Mamba collection of watches is me: It is my alter ego, so to speak. As I mentioned before, it is sharp, cutting edge and sleek which are characteristics I try to apply when I’m out there on the basketball court.
To win the nomination, you speak to people who vote in Republican primaries. And they tend not to be millennials or minorities… When I win the nomination and show up at a black church, they say, ‘Where have you been Mr. Romney?’
The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.
I like men. I like the sound of their voices, the way they think. They’re more sensitive than women. With a woman, everything is either this or that, black or white. But a man can see shades of gray. That’s what I call being sensitive.
Nothing is black or white, nothing’s ‘us or them.’ But then there are magical, beautiful things in the world. There’s incredible acts of kindness and bravery, and in the most unlikely places, and it gives you hope.
I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, ‘Oh, you know, I can use this word because I’m black.’
A friend in the War Office warned me that I was in Kitchener’s black books, and that orders had been given for my arrest next time I appeared in France.
Nothing is out of our realm, because it has nothing to do with color. As black people, we’re not different from anyone else, other than the exterior.
I support any procedure that allows photographers to express themselves, whether that involves color, black and white, platinum, palladium and digital technology.
I’m trying to incorporate colour into my life. Until recently, everything in my closet was black, white, grey, navy or olive.
Republicans think that the NAACP is the only voice in the black community. It is a voice in the black community. But it’s not the only voice.
I think the best black screenwriter is Quentin Tarantino.
In general, the mass media tell us that black people are not loving, that our lives are so fraught with violence and aggression that we have no time to love.
Don’t judge me. You wanna judge me, put on a black gown and get a gavel. Get in line with the rest of them that’s about to judge me. I got court dates every other month. It’s me against the world – that’s how I feel.
I do not diminish the incredible symbolic importance of a black man getting elected president. But my euphoria was a smart guy getting elected president. Maybe for the first time in my lifetime we had elected one of the thousand smartest Americans president.
I don’t understand labels. I don’t need anybody to tell me I’m Latina or black or anything else. I’ve played characters that were written for Caucasian females, I just want to be given the same consideration as everybody else, and so far that has been happening.
As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility – which I do.
White America is tortured by black America’s failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency.
Integration is a man’s ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.
The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.
I have been wearing black, which was a reaction to the Ginger thing. But now I have hopes and I can be anything. Tomorrow I might be naked with a feather boa, who knows?
I am a normal guy from the Black Forest, and I do not compare myself with the geniuses.
What we witnessed in Ferguson, in Baltimore, and in Baton Rouge was a collapse of social order. So many of the actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcend peaceful protest and violates the code of conduct we rely on. I call it anarchy.
And the blood of brave men was shed like unto the shedding of rain from a black cloud.
If you only think of me during Black History Month, I must be failing as an educator and as an astrophysicist.
Being young, working class, and black, everything you do is policed. If someone hits you and you hit back, you are aggressive. If you cry, you are weak. You are kind of always pretending to be something.
I want to be different. If everyone is wearing black, I want to be wearing red.
Naturally we need black men to give this movie serious credibility.
I was wearing black clothes almost from the beginning. I feel comfortable in black. I felt like black looked good onstage, that it was attractive, so I started wearing it all the time.
We must learn how to live in the space of inner peace in our everyday lives. This takes consistent, conscious effort because I know so many black women are hurting and sad, and we don’t easily express our heartache or show our wounds.
The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn’t see many paintings with black people in them.
Slavery exists. It is black in the South, and white in the North.
Dark witches focus on dark magic, black magic and all kinds of horrible things. I don’t believe white witches have warts on them either, or pointy noses.
People need to remember that I am the first black driver in F1, so I am obviously going to be different to past drivers.
Everything’s not black and white. We choose to make bad decisions or not.
When I was younger, it was harder for me to find a black eyeliner that would actually show up on my skin. Being a dark-skinned woman, when you find something that actually shows up on your face, you love it even more.
The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren’t as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young.
Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?
When I talk about rock n’ roll, to me, that goes back to the beginning of the 1950s. Blue suede shoes and sideburns, man. Pink and black coloured clothes. Turn your collar up, comb your hair in ducktails. And the music was cool. It was a whole culture then – a different world.
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Being a big black man in China in the mainland, walking down the street, you have everyone looking at you, ‘Basketball?’ They don’t really see a lot of us around, maybe on TV, so they’re just looking.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been.
The norm is white, apparently, in the view of people who see things in that way. For them, the only reason you would introduce a black character is to introduce this kind of abnormality. Usually, it’s because you’re telling a story about racism or at least about race.
The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one’s viewpoint.
I just bring a black turtleneck sweater everywhere – it’s the greatest purchase of my life. Period.
My mom is a yoga instructor: 100% black with dreadlocks.
If you are Black or Brown, or a liberal or immigrant or Democrat, or a woman unwilling to quietly submit, then Ailes was the ultimate villain. You were the object of mockery and scorn – sometimes overt, often subtle. You were the thing to be gawked at, pawed at, jeered at, propositioned or feared.
Being transgender, like being gay, tall, short, white, black, male, or female, is another part of the human condition that makes each individual unique, and something over which we have no control. We are who we are in the deepest recesses of our minds, hearts and identities.
I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.
Al Sharpton is not important. He’s nothing more than a black pawn in a very sophisticated white economic chess game.
I’m not to be confused with Natasha Henstridge in ‘Species,’ where I just emerge out of the weird alien womb looking amazing. I really rely heavily on my black outfits and my gold chains to give me sort of a thing.
The whole thing about ‘progressive R&B’ blows my mind. Black music has always been progressive.
But what of black women?… I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.
I like a venti black coffee, no room for cream or sugar.
I don’t find anything black and white; I find grey in every person, and that is what excites me.
For four to six months at a time, I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast, carrots, and black coffee.
People often expect that I should know a lot of things because I’m black. I don’t really explain it to people, but it’s like, I’m from Australia, my Mum’s Aussie, and I grew up with five other Aussie brothers and sisters.
There were many times that I took such a big hit that I was dazed; I’m not going to lie. I’d see black, but I’m still looking for the puck. Where’s the play going? I’m going to keep going. Same thing in figure skating. If I take a hard fall, I’m going to get up, and I’m going to do the next jump.
I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.
In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.
I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.
My workday begins around 11 A.M., with a cup of black coffee in each hand. If I had more hands, there would be more coffee.
Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women’s history and entrepreneurship.
I’m lying in my bed, blanket is warm, this body will never keep me safe from harm. I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you’d come back to me. To feel you at my side, wouldn’t need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied.
You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things.
I don’t think it’s different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.
I know seeing bigger women looking great would have mattered to me when I was younger – that’s why I try not to wear a black dress every day.
One motivation for the ‘Soul Train’ awards was the grumbling that all of us in the industry have heard about the way black music tends to be viewed as a secondary phenomenon by the other awards shows.
When in doubt, always wear black.
Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.
I’m not a child star, but you could say that I’ve grown up on TV. I went from being an unknown, down-and-out comic from Brooklyn and the Bronx to being a regular character on a major network comedy called ‘Martin.’ From there I went on to become the most notable black comic on ‘Saturday Night Live’ since Eddie Murphy.
I love wearing black, especially leather or even faux leather! It just adds edge and a sense of class and maturity to your outfit!
As I detail in my new book: ‘Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,’ there are many myths surrounding the detention of a relatively small number of top terrorists at CIA-run ‘black sites’ from 2002 until they were sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
I just hope that when black people look at me, they don’t see someone superhuman. They see themselves.
Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.
One of the prices that we pay for integration was the disintegration of the black community.
All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.
When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people – black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants – to make up America.
I grew up going to a school where there weren’t a lot of black kids. And so my mother, from a very, very young age, has sensitized me to race.
Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom.
I don’t see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.
I love berries. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, black berries, anything with an ‘errie’ in it!
Do you follow American politics? They hate Obama. Hate him. He’s a black man. That’s what it is: it’s racist. This guy is no bleeding-heart liberal. He’s a centrist.
Obama has built his public image around his ability to bridge divisions – racial, ideological or generational. And that was his reputation, even at Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the ‘Law Review.’
In 2009, I edited, under the aegis of the Library of America, an anthology called ‘Becoming Americans: Immigrants Tell Their Stories from Jamestown to Today.’ It featured immigrants from different backgrounds, from black slaves like Phillis Wheatley to Yiddish-language speakers like Henry Roth.
I’ve always been very image prone, along the lines of bands like Black Sabbath and even Devo.
I don’t ever remember a single day of hopelessness. I knew from the history of the labor movement, especially of the black people, that it was an undertaking of great trial. That, live or die, I had to stick with it, and we had to win.
I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.
If I have long hair, I go for more… fitting, like a miniskirt dress or a very tight black leather outfit.
I believe very strongly that when it comes to desire, when it comes to attraction, that things are never black and white, things are very much shades of grey.
I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren’t for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.
In Portugal, seeing a black cat is a bad sign; it’s bad luck. But they tell me if it crosses from left to right, it’s good luck. But I don’t like black cats!
It seems astonishing to be paid for indulging in pure pleasure. For me to go to Coburg is rather as if a trainspotter was sent for a few weeks to Swindon or a chocoholic asked on holiday by Green and Black.
It’s really rare in life that a situation is as black and white as we tend to paint it.
Life is not black and white; there is some gray nuance to it.
I am whatever you want me to be and I can’t control that. My experience is my experience, but I can’t really claim anything. I know when I take my wig off at night and I have to twist my hair up, I’m black. But I don’t get too personal most of the time.
What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.
Life isn’t always black and white. You’re not always sure you’re right. At least I’m not.
I’m a black kid from the ghetto of Coney Island, Brooklyn, who only ever dreamed of playing in the NBA. So to have that dream come true but then go on this second journey in China… it’s so far beyond anything that kid could have imagined.
You didn’t know whether Chuck Berry was black or white – it was not a concern.
It is just not something we need to forget easily, to just bend the knee, to put on our t-shirts, Black Lives Matter, and one week after everyone forgets that.
Yes, we do defend our office as we do defend our homes. This is a constitutional right everybody has, and nothing’s funny about that. The only reason they get mad at the Black Panther Party when you do it is for the simple reason that we’re political.
Being glamorous is about strength and confidence. It’s black and white – dramatic. You have to be strong.
I don’t see myself as a ‘black actor,’ I’m just Shemar Moore the actor.
I generally don’t think most situations can be labeled as black or white.
The simplest fix for better grilling is to line the inside of your barbecue with tin foil. It dramatically affects how evenly the heat is distributed. That crusty black hibachi or Weber grill is doing your food no favors.
I’ve been in situations where I was the only black guy. We’re in a time now where nobody wants to see that. But it still happens.
I was a sullen kid who smoked cigarettes and wore black every day, and I went to a school that was lacrosse players and Izods.
I was taught that Jesus the Son of God was a white man, and hearing black people singing, ‘Lord, wash me, and I will be whiter than snow,’ made me sick.
There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don’t sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested.
That’s how we do it in the black community; we give back to the people who made us who we are. We never forget that.
I’m not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one’s skin color or one’s gender, I think it should be done based on one’s need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
I’m light-skinned. I’m mixed with black and white.
I’m black, and black don’t crack. It does droop.
I think the lesson is that when you give black voices a platform and the opportunity to tell our story, we will tell good stories just like anybody else.
I’m glad that young black people are successful with the music. I’m not a hater.
You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.
And when I was angry, when I was younger, I was in a cocoon. Now I’m a beautiful, black butterfly.
Funny is not a color. Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone.
Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them.
There’s a lot of ways that white women undermine women of color, and black women in particular.
I’m a traditionalist, so for me, black coffee is cool.
All my records feel like a diary of the time and headspace they were made in and ‘Black Sands’ documents this in real time for me. A transition of falling in love with beatmaking again. An appreciation of a place and time and an anticipation for what was going to happen next.
I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn’t even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game.
I tried ‘Black Panther.’ I escaped from the cinema after 20 minutes. I thought it was as bad as ‘Star Wars.’ I hated ‘Star Wars.’
During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.
With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black.
No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.
I prefer to work with grey characters rather than black and white.
George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
After 27 years, I walked out of my first one a few months ago. Black Sheep with Chris Farley.
My least favorite ingredient to cook with is black pepper.
I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.
It’s about you. If you win, it’s you; if you lose, it’s you. Black and white. Nowhere to hide.
I’m looking forward to it, to be able to represent the black culture… but I’m doing my best at managing it, keeping it behind me, and that’s the best thing I can do.
Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.
Who’s the new Ramones, who’s the new Guns ‘N Roses, who’s the new Motley Crue, who’s the new Black Sabbath? They’re coming, they’re on the street, they’re 16, 17 years old.
Death metal uses a lot of white face paint and black hair dye to make its point. I quite enjoy this genre for its intensity, extremism and underlying irony: You have to be alive to play it and listen to it.
I’m here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that’s true of every black person I know who has achieved.
There was a while when I was feeling like, ‘Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this’.
I wish I was a cool guy and could drink coffee black, but I put almond milk and raw cane sugar in it.
Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.
I think anybody who is racist is an idiot whether they are black or white.
I love being black in America, and especially being black in Hollywood.
My first web series, ‘Dorm Diaries,’ was a realistic mockumentary about what it was like to be black at Stanford University. I’m black and I went to Stanford. Boom. Easy.
Do you know, it’s funny, but I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage.
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
For those of us in the financial world, Black Friday has a strong negative connotation, referring to a stock market catastrophe.
Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.
I’m happy to say I’m a feminist. Being a feminist is just believing in equal rights. Man, woman, gay, straight, black, white – we’re all in it together.
For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.
Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.
I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
Some people feel that because you are black you will never be treated fairly, and that you should voice your opinions, be militant about them. I don’t feel this way. You can’t convince a fool against his will.
Black pepper is necessary to absorb the key antioxidants in most spices and foods, including turmeric, so get a pepper grinder and fill it with Tellicherry peppercorns.
I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.
I cannot be made into the commentator for the unspoken black masses.
I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
For some reason, we’re brainwashed to think if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don’t break the law, you’re not a good black person.
I am black or white, I’ll never be grey in my life.
I always was a weird child. My mother told me the story that, in kindergarten, I would come home and tell her about this weird kid in my class who drew only with black crayons and didn’t speak to other kids. I talked about it so much that my mother brought it up with the teacher, who said, ‘What? That’s your son.’
American history and the black experience are inextricable. And both are inextricable from policing. Far more often than not, that’s been a good thing.
I’m always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else’s contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we’re demons.
I’m working to create a space where it feels easy to include and imagine black girls and make black girls like me the main characters of our lives.
‘Children of Blood and Bone’ is basically ‘Black Panther’ with magic.
Since most scientists are just a bit religious, and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific, we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole, while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
What I really resent most about people sticking labels on you is that it cuts off all the other elements of what you are because it can only deal with black and white; the cartoon.
My work is often a therapy for myself – a working out of these issues as a black woman. And a way of allowing other black women to work through this kind of stigmatization as they look through the images and feel how distorted or contorted they might be in the public eye.
The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
I don’t particularly follow the Bauhaus school of design, where you make everything into a black box – simplify it.
Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.
If you’re a black conservative and you criticize the black community, you’re an Uncle Tom. If you’re a white conservative and you criticize the black community, you’re somehow a racist.
In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.
The black man has become a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.
As a grown woman, I saw the first black president reach down a hand and touch the face of a child like I once was, lifting his eyes toward a better future. But I have never, ever, in all my years seen a leader so committed to delivering that better future to America’s children as Hillary Clinton.
We must begin to tell black women’s stories because, without them, we cannot tell the story of black men, white men, white women, or anyone else in this country. The story of black women is critical because those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.
My martial arts came a lot from my uncle, who actually taught martial arts through the military. He was a black belt in tae kwon do, but also, he used a lot of military-style fighting where it’s not the high kicks or anything like that. It’s basically defeat your opponent as fast as possible.
I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk.
If you are born black, and you don’t accept your natural status as a victim, then the validity of your blackness is immediately called into question.
Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.
One of the most challenging things for me to do was to walk away from ‘Black Panther.’
Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.
A black belt is what you prove to be, but also what it means in your heart.
We buy the most expensive grain available growing on the best part of Russian land called black soil. We also play close attention to the purity of the water – we get it from Lake Ladoga. We store it ourselves to specific conditions. We carefully manage distillation at my distillery in Moscow.
There has always been a conscious effort to destroy any upliftment of the black race, whether that be physically, mentally, psychologically, morally, culturally, or economically.
If I were a black liberal, I would be hailed, I guess. But I’m not. I mean, I think for myself. I want to make my own decisions.
We’re not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.
Black women I’m talking to you, because it’s not white women, it’s not Latino, it’s not Native American – I checked, it’s y’all. The self hate is ridiculous. Why do you hate yourself so much, why do you hate your texture, why do you hate your culture, why do you hate your history?
Black Lives Matter is not just concerned with what happens in policing. The disregard, the disrespect, and the lack of dignity for black life transcends through the fabric of our society.
Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
I have very little fashion sense, and to tell you the truth, I give it very little thought. I dress to be as comfortable as I possibly can. Most of my clothing is either black, grey, or dark blue, and I don’t really wear a lot of colours. But I do like jackets. I have a little bit of an obsession with them.
I was the first black director on ‘Dallas.’ I drove my car into the studio lot and the guard asked me who I was delivering to.
