Bell Hooks Quotes

And realizing there is no such thing as the Black experience. Time and events allow for change on both sides.

I am particularly conscious of my connection to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance because I, too, am a Black poet, born into, and shaped by, the very community in which those poets of the past produced so much of the work we associate with the Harlem Renaissance. We speak from the same place, both literally and metaphorically.

God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.

One must learn how to be black in America.

Do not let where you come from define you, but never forget the values you learned from your close community.

I came out of my shell in college.

My grandmothers are Irish-American and German-American; my grandfather is from the Caribbean. My father is African-American. My family looked funny. I just started naturally imitating whoever I was talking to. I didn't want to be a phony, but I felt very authentic in the moment.

Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one another all the time and cause one another to change and have the opportunity to observe the changes over time.

My grandparents were colored. My parents were Negroes. And now I am Black.

I always say if you put someone from a small town into a big city for ten years, then when they go back, they'll act differently. Are they the same person? Sure, but do they act different? Yeah.

Certain events make people come out of their little boxes and become part of the whole.

I was sort of a floater in high school; I feel like I tried my hand at all the different stereotypes or cliques. I'm grateful for the experience to walk in all those different shoes.

Have I had experiences by other people identifying me as black and behaving towards me as black? Yes. Just for as long as maybe somebody who was born categorised as black? No.

In 2016, the conversation of the black experience is so broad, and it's very raw. I mean, c'mon, we have a black president. That's a major thing, and there are so many other significant occurrences that have come from the '60s and '70s up to now.

We can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community.

When the Negro learns what manner of man he is spiritually, he will wake up all over. He will stop playing white even on the stage. He will rise in the majesty of his own soul.

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.

In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.

When I walk out into the street or go to the toilet, I don't think of myself as being black. Of course, other people think of me as black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is a part of me.

I who have gone the gamut from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sunam qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now... I have hopes for myself.

We're always learning. We're all in the process of decolonizing ourselves - removing all the parts of us that are sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist. I mean, everybody in society needs to be in this process because everybody's been brought up in a misogynist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture.

We are invested in being together. In having friends. In joining our lives. And yet these are the people who also fail you. And when they fail you in these ways, it signals a larger understanding about who you are as a black person in the world. It's not just a little failure for me. Its something exposed.

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own

One of the facets of growing up the way I did, I never had the experience of being solely in the black community. Even my family, my mother is what they call Creole, so she's part French, part black, and grew up in Louisiana. It's a very specific kind of blackness that is different than what is traditionally thought of as the black community and black culture. So, I never felt a part of whatever that was.