Rabih Alameddine Quotes

So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features.

I'd like less Irish-looking skin.

If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa

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?

Italians are Aryans. Jews do not belong to the Italian race..

I have dark skin. My nickname is El Negro. They call me El Negro in Mexico because even in my country, the dark skin is evidence of Indian blood, a sign that one technically belongs to a third class. Even my grandmother had some kind of differentiation with me, because I was darker than my siblings.

One drop of black blood and you're black. That was the rule. That's what kept the wall between whites and blacks was this one drop rule. So I was raised with absolutely no ambiguity about that.

I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.

Fashion for my mother was about asserting and demonstrating you had aesthetics, tastes, sensibility, manners, beauty - qualities that black people were always trying to prove they possessed, because it was often assumed that we didn't.

I was raised in Nigeria, and my mother is white, but I never saw her as white, not until I came to America. She was just my mother. She didn't really have a color.

I am not renouncing my blackness and going on about my day. I am rejecting the legitimacy of the entire racial construct in which blackness functions as one orienting pole.

Cinema is a little over 100 years old, and a lot of what we do is built around film emulsion. Those things were calibrated for white skin. We've always placed powder on skin to dull the light. But my memory of growing up in Miami is this moist, beautiful black skin.

The lighter the skin, the more acceptable you are. The darker the skin, the more marginalised you become. I want to demonstrate that you can produce beauty in the context of a figure that has that kind of velvety blackness. It can be done.

White Americans have the option of not having to think about race on a daily basis. People of color don't. Race is a major deciding factor in their lives and the histories of their families.

Light-skinned women, we can break them down more easy.

I'm dark-skinned. When I'm around black people, I'm made to feel 'other' because I'm dark-skinned. I've had to wrestle with that, with people going, 'You're too black.' Then I come to America, and they say, 'You're not black enough.'

Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids - and what do they all have in common? They're all lighter skinned. Do you think that's an accident?

Growing up, I was constantly labeled an 'oreo' by my black peers because of my proper speech and 'valley girl accent.'

Yes colorism does exist if you look at historically what's happened as far as crossing over to pop radio.

I'm half English - and it has been highlighted by people who tell me that I'm not Asian enough.

Dark skin is considered less than light skin in the in the minds of many in our community and in the media.

There was always a struggle with being Asian and not being Asian enough. It's going to be down to me to own my race.

The only time my Dad ever said I might have not gotten something because of how I look was when I auditioned for Tyler Perry's 'Meet the Browns.' My dad didn't think I was 'black enough' for the show. My dad isn't the most politically correct person.

If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?

Colorism is not a good thing, especially when you're Black.