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.
