Randall Kennedy Quotes

I am pleased that God made my skin black, but I only wish he had made it thicker.

Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting.

You can't get much whiter than me.

I never really had to put much thought into my race, and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color, and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.

The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard.

I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

We see through the eyes of children that they're not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They're not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone's skin.

I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.

When I was, like, 5 years old, I used to pray to have light skin because I would always hear how pretty that little light skin girl was, or I would hear I was pretty to be dark skin. It wasn't until I was 13 that I really learned to appreciate my skin color and know that I was beautiful.

A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.

White Americans can go a long time without ever thinking about the color of their skin. Black and brown Americans have no choice but to confront issues of race every day.

Look at my skin - I am not of the white people.

What is it to be white? It does mean something to be Norwegian. It means something to be Polish or German or Spanish. But 'white' is simply a catchall for 'light-skinned person.' It doesn't really mean anything.

I got the genetics of - not to get into racism or anything - but I'm built like a black man.

The fans called me Jungleman. They said this young guy's not white. He's black in a white man's skin.

The colour of someone's skin doesn't explain anything.

I think the obsession with fair skin should end.

It is true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No.

I wanted to separate color from race. Distinguishing color - light, black, in-between - as the marker for race is really an error.

I'm not going to play a racial game. With me, you're going to meet a guy named Shelby Steele, and you will have to get to know me as an individual. The color of my skin won't tell you anything. I think there's more and more of that in America.

Even if you apply any kind of lotion and straighten your hair you will never be white.

I feel that if you can transcend the color of your skin, with your talent, why carry that as a badge or a label?

Why should anyone think a white skin superior in evaluating the qualities of human life? I did not really admire a white skin so much myself. Did I not prefer the brown skin that came with exposure to the sun?

There is a political and racial context behind everything that I do. Not always because I design it that way, or because I want it that way, but rather because it's just the way people look at the work of an African-American artist in this country.

As for the not-black black president issue - white people can imagine blacks worse off than them, no problem. And now they can imagine blacks better off, no problem. But they still can't imagine black people who are just like them. That's the real problem. That's racism. Not being able to believe that those others are actually just like you.