Jess Row Quotes

I am not going to say that only people of color can write people of color, because that means only white people can write white people, and that's not OK.

Spike Lee made such a difference in terms of black filmmakers, the subtleties - those authors, those writers who write from love, and those who write from that lofty position of superiority.I felt he took aspects of the black experience in America and held it up for us to see. He tried to put it in perspective. He did put it in perspective in his unique way.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

I definitely am not white.

Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.

I've always considered myself a person of color.

I never tried to emulate that New York rap style. What I do is a quasi rap. It's a honky rap, not a black rap. I find it puzzling that so many people have assumed I'm black.

The white race is doomed not because it's white but because of its misdeeds.

To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say 'Cast down your bucket where you are.'

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

One of the things I'm concerned about is that I really want to make sure the races of all the characters are kept. I don't like it when black characters become white in movies, or things like that.

We[with Jordan Peele] wanted to do something with [Barack] Obama because we actually felt that Obama was kind of responsible for us even getting a show in the first place because there's this biracial person who might, you know, have to ride the divide between two different races.

No black person married to a white person can speak for me!

The so called white races are really pinko-grey.

I'm proud to be white. I don't have anything against my color. But I don't think color matters, either. Just like I feel it doesn't matter that I'm a white dude doin' black music.

I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his brilliant short story "Gold Coast."

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background........Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me

I don't know how to write without thinking what people would want. You don't know whether they want you to be black or white, so you kind of get a gray, something in the middle.

My friend Ian Hagemann, a regular at Wiscon, once said on a panel that when he reads science fiction futures that are full of white people and no one else, he wonders when the race war happened that wiped out the majority of the human race, and why the writer hasn’t mentioned such an important plot point.

If we are to be the last of the White men who conquered the world; if we are finally to be overwhelmed by a pack of rats, let us at least face the death of our race as our ancestors faced their death - like man. Let us not crawl down amongst the rats begging for mercy or trying to out-sneak them and pretend to be rats ourselves!

Inter-racial sex is probably some of the best sex on the planet. You know what that is? Because with inter-racial sex there's like this whole added pressure to perform. 'Cause it's kinda like you're not just humping for yourself. You're humping for your race. You got to represent your people.

All politicians are going to mask to some degree in order to present themselves in away they think will get them votes. What's different in Obama's case is that he's wearing a racial mask, this 'bargainer's' mask, and I think very effectively, whereby he gives whites the benefit of the doubt. He's essentially saying, 'I am going to presume you are not racist, if you won't hold my race against me.' So, his mask is a distinctly racial one.

As a white male in America, I have privilege. As a white male who happens to be an artist with a fan base, I have a platform to spread awareness about that privilege. However, songs about race and privilege are very difficult to A) write and B) dissect as a listener. They're heavy.

The technologist was the final guise of the white missionary, industrialization the last gospel of a dying race and living standards a substitute for a purpose in living.