Yvonne Orji Quotes

I'm used to being the only black guy. I've seriously walked onstage, looked out in the audience, 15,000 people - and I'm the only one in the place. It's no big deal. My whole career's been like that.

No, I don't think my presence will cause an increase in black attendance at Cleveland.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

For me, as a child, I certainly thought that there were more black people in the world than white people.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality - they don't feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

If you watch any show that stars white people, white people aren't coming up to them like, 'Thank you for showing my face on the big screen.' Because they see their faces in popular culture all the time.

As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.

I know that I am a black man in a white world. . . I know that I never had it made.

Nobody black had learned anything from the 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' or from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. That was a revelation of white people.

I didn't grow up around all white people; I never wanted to gentrify hip-hop, I've never wanted to speak to an all-white audience.

Ninety-five percent of my audience was white.

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

This county was formed for the white man, not for the black man.

The central question is … whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally in which it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is Yes. The white community is so entitled because, for the time being, they are the more advanced race.

I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on the planet.

I couldn't have known how vertiginous the entire Huxtable project was. I was, like, 10, 13, 15 years old when the show was a thing. But eventually, I could see that Cliff became a play for respectability. 'This is how you comport yourself among white people, young black child. Take a little bit of Howard with you on your way to Harvard.'

There were not many black students at Juilliard, unfortunately. So when you get there, you become very good friends, in particular, with the other black students.

One of the most important misunderstandings for white people to get over to move forward is this idea that racism is a good-bad proposition - that if we're good we can't be part of it, that being uncomfortable means you're a terrible person. We have to let go of that and understand it as a system we all live in.

My 'Black Panther' run really wasn't about Black Panther. It was about Ross. It was about exploding myths about black superheroes, black characters, and black people, targeted specifically at a white, male-dominated retailer base.

The history of slavery in this country has affected not only how black people see themselves, but how white people see black people as well, and the roles they're meant to play... I'm aware of it, as a person of color.

When 93 percent of our stories are told by white men, it's an issue. And if those white men go on and tell the stories the way they see their world, which is all white, then it's an even bigger problem.

Even white people are tired of watching white people's shows.

Racism has two primary functions: the oppression of people of color, which most people recognize, but also the simultaneous elevation of white people. You can't hold one group down without lifting the other up.

To never think about race means that it doesn't really shape your life, or more specifically, the race that you have is not a burden to you.