Randall Kennedy Quotes

I don't understand why black people feel this undying need to want to be down with white people all the time.

There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was not viewed by many white Americans as black. He was not seen as the African American athlete who was rebellious: Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron... He was accepted in golf clubs that were very tony.

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

I don't think people in America understand race, and how deep the hooks of whiteness there are in our consciousness.

In colleges throughout America, students are taught to have disdain for the white race. I know this sounds incredible, or at least exaggerated. It is neither.

People called me 'Iman the black model'. In my country, we're all black, so nobody called somebody else black. It was foreign to my ears.

Only blacks can play the race card, apparently; only they think in racial terms, at least to hear white America tell it.

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.'

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.

It doesn't even feel like racism is real. It just feels like the weirdest ploy, like we're just being had on so many levels. It's even kind of funny when you think about it. A reason not to like someone is 'because you're black.' C'mon, man. How dumb is that?

Liberals believe that they own blacks - still. They believe they're something proprietary about being black in this country, and if you deviate from the way they want you to think, in the way they want you to act, they grow violent.

I'm guilty of reverse discrimination. I'm white, and people don't think that white fighters are any good.

What we acknowledged as a nation during the one-and-a-half year trial of George Zimmerman is that the white majority's public imagination of black people was based on their fear of us, not the reality of who we are.

I feel like a lot of black men 'put on' because of what they see and because of what people tell them they have to be.

Black art is not some kind of a magic wand: there still has to be a humble heart attached that's listening to it. And I know it's not a wand because plenty of fans love to turn on us as soon as they realize we are actual black people, with black concerns in our black lives.

Nobody thought a white girl should learn to cook in South Africa. I went to drama school. My mother was an actress, so I thought I'd be an actress.

When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused.

I think racism is something that is passed on and taught to our kids, and that's a shame.

My father is black - was black. My mother is white.

As a black woman I always felt growing up I had to do above and beyond stuff to be noticed, to feel like I could hang with everybody else.

People of color understand what it means to be white more than I ever will.

As you keep pulling back the layers of how deeply rooted anti-blackness and white supremacy are in this country, it is exhausting, and it is traumatizing.

There's a lot of other rappers that aren't what they claim to be, and they get a pass because they're black.

The biggest thing is we need to stop acting like racism don't exist.

It's important to understand you can't remove the historical context of racially charged stereotypes or slurs as much as we like to pretend that we can.