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.
