Quotes on Black

Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.

In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.

Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.

Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression.

I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable.

I don't know what gives me more pleasure: watching my story unfold or going in and watching a room full of black people talking for me and writing words for black people.

I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.

If you want to get an idea across, wrap it up in a person.

I've heard people say, 'Why do you have to do a show that's called 'Black Girls Rock'?' or 'Why is there an expression called 'black girl magic'?' You know, when you say, 'Save the dolphins,' you don't mean, 'I don't like whales.' That's just not the way it works!

I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.

Hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders, and I like one class of the venomous creatures as little as I do the other.

Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white - and we're all precious in God's sight.

In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.

It's a struggle for every young Black man. You know how it is, only God can judge us.

When people say things like, 'Oh, I can't find black or brown whatever position it is,' I wanted to be clear that we exist in droves. When I tell people, 'Hey, share your work, share your LinkedIn,' it's with the ultimate goal that somebody on that thread gets hired, or something positive happens.

Now Coraline," said Miss Spink, "what's your name?" "Coraline," said Coraline. "And we don't know each other, do we?" Coraline looked at the thin young woman with black button eyes and shook her head slowly.

Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent.

I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.