Okieriete Onaodowan Quotes

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.

I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a 'brother.'

I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.

White America don't get to dictate how me and Shaq talk to each other.

Seattle is still more Caucasian than most medium-sized cities. The sort of psychosexual politics of white fandom in context of black athletes who are also both very rich and slightly angry is just, to me, bottomlessly fascinating.

You say, for example, “Why do the Indians till the ground and live as we do?” May we not ask with equal propriety, “Why do not the white people hunt and live as we do?”

There are still people who look askance at a minister dressed in indigenous skirts …. The old elite wonders where the president’s tie is. But things are changing.

We Blacks have never had a President; we’ve only had preachers.

My first series, the 'Inheritance' trilogy, in the first book, you were dealing with a woman of color from an impoverished culture, being brought up among wealthy, privileged white people and having to cope and perform in ways that she has not been raised to do, and that was obviously drawn from some personal experiences.

In the locker room, and when I'm with my friends, we use racial slurs... What I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me what's appropriate and inappropriate.

I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in. I didn't identify with black culture. Like, I didn't like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn't into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.

Stories about race and identity pique my interest for obvious reasons. That's in my body, my brain, my history, my memories - it's all part of my toolbox as an actor.

I know I'm a black actor, but really, I'm an actor who happens to be black.

The Huxtables laughed and bonded and debated and lip-synced. They were glamorous and simple and extraordinarily human. And affluent. And educated. And so many different kinds of black. You'd think that all of that would make them the Howard University of African-American family life. But white people wanted to matriculate, too.

Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?

I was very conscious of the world being this very crazed place that demanded explanation. I didn't see a whole lot of people who looked like me doing it on television.

For me, whenever I would see a lot of 'black films,' I didn't feel represented in it. I didn't feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.

I think that's what's so great about 'Jessica James' is you get to sit back and take a moment and realize that this person is black. And some days, this character wakes up and feels black, and some days, she doesn't. That is, for me, a fully black experience.

We're very used to seeing a huge diversity of white people. You never just expect two white people on TV to feel the same way.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

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.

It's called 'Dear White People,' but really, it's about these black characters and how they are involved or not involved in a racial scandal in ways that might surprise them and others, right?

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

I'm more black than I am white. That's the accurate answer from my truth.

I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite - I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.