Claudia Rankine Quotes

The majority of women in America look like me.

Rey is so strong. She's cool and smart and she can look after herself. Young girls can look at her and know that they can wear trousers if they want to. That they don't have to show off their bodies.

We Latin women are liberated from the neck up, not the neck down.

I try to be feminist in, like, I love myself and I don't need someone else's approval.

I suppose it's the feminist in me, but I didn't always associate modelling with an intelligent career. I used to put myself down for doing it.

Feminists were psyched that I had armpit hair.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

I am constantly struggling to show people that there is more to me than my appearance. You do have to try and overcome those hurdles. Female actresses need to be given the chance to be more than how they look.

I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.

I think people just don't respect women's bodies in general, the bodies of women of color in general.

In my opinion, a woman's body is not her only asset.

I'm constantly trying to redefine what being a beauty queen is.

The heart of 'Truevine' is about the travails of two strong black women who agitate to get justice for their family.

When I talk, it shouldn't just be black girls listening.

As it pertains to my black womanhood, there's just a lot of ground to cover. There's a lot of stuff to say.

If a woman says, I love myself; I love my body; I'm comfortable with my life, comfortable with my mistakes, and I deserve a seat at every table and everything should be completely equal, there are guys who lose their minds.

'Jism' is what it is because of my feminine gaze... And I believe strongly that my female audiences deserve eye candy as much as my male audiences do!

I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and it took me getting out into the real world and understanding what I faced as a woman in my career to really open up my eyes.

The young girls of color that first encountered the 'me too' movement in community centers and classrooms and church basements were there not only because they needed a safe space, but because they needed their own space.

My hope is that 'Blk Girl Soldier' is a freedom song for black women today who are fighting the macro- and microaggressions of daily life in our city/country/world.

I think it's really cool that someone could have ovaries and the presidency. Growing up, I thought I could never be president because I was black and female. Now I know that's wrong. Within my own lifetime - that's different. Within my lifetime, interracial couples are more common. Within my own lifetime, biracial folks are able to claim that.

I can't just go out in a T-Shirt and say, 'Hey, today I'm not wearing a bra.'

I don't think God makes mistakes and I think that women have to not rely on men to define their worth.

I think it's really important for all young girls to see themselves represented in fashion so they don't feel alone in the world.

I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that's not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.