Quotes on Black

Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.

We're all complaining about diversity in Hollywood, but we've got to address the colorism within the black community of Hollywood first.

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.

I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.

If I go to the museum and see white bodies, black bodies, Asian bodies, Latino bodies, then I will expect to see those things every time I go. That matters a lot.

For black people, everything we do has to be ratified and endorsed by a power structure that is white. And that reinforces a kind of racial hierarchy where whiteness is the privileged position to be in, and ethnicity is problematic.

When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.

You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution.

We're told that independent film lovers... folks that are used to watching art house films, won't come out and see a film with black people in it - I've been told that in rooms, big rooms, studio rooms, and I know that's not true.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.

A lot of the media says, 'oh, black musician converts X-number of Klansmen.' I never converted one. But over 200 have left that, the white supremacy movements, because I have been the impetus for that.

Racism is not only in football, it's in cricket too. Even within teams as a black man, I get the end of the stick. Black and powerful. Black and proud.

A lot of black women still carry a lot of pain when they see black men with women who aren't black, and that's really unfortunate that that could make us so upset. It has to do with self esteem.

First, you have stereotypes, and that will be the black drug dealer, the east Asian kung fu master, the Middle Eastern terrorist in 'True Lies.' Then you have stuff that takes place on culturally specific terrain, that engages with it, but actually subverts assumptions. 'Smashes' stereotypes. That's where I've come into the game.

There's no black and white in this world; it's all grey. That's what people are like! No one think they're a baddie. Everyone thinks they're trying to do their bit to make the world a better place.

Now that the black experience isn't viewed as box-office death, people are catching up to untapped auteurs.

I've never bothered about my color. I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love. Maybe. I don't have a problem with being black in a white country or being with my people.

I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.