Nia Long Quotes

I just feel in a lot of ways black people are so much looser and cooler. Just as a culture, it's so much more real.

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.

It's very necessary, showing the positive aspect of a black father. We see a lot of black women being the head of the household and holding the house down, but I think we need to have those images because there are black fathers out there who are doing the same thing and who are the glue to the family. That's who Black Lightning is.

I really just prefer to be exactly who I am, and black is really the closest race and cultural category that represents the essence of who I am.

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"

Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.

Our world needs good and strong families.

I had talked to my agent a lot over the years about not being interested in stereotypical "black films" [because] I didn't like the way they were representing black people over and over and over again in the same way.

One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.

There ain't nothin' like a Black woman.

Black-ish is really a show about an American family and these are some of the topics that come up - for all of us, in different ways - and we get to see how this family is walking through it.

I read that Hollywood wanted to film Fences years ago with a white director, but [August] Wilson refused. He thought that the director needed to have lived the culture of black Americans.

Back home the black women are all beautiful

Blaxploitation films were black films targeting black people. They were films made to appeal to a culture in a way that was supposed to be unfiltered.

When you're a black superhero you can't erase the notion that you're black.

The poor black people in it make the black people in Gone With the Wind look like Malcolm X.

I’m a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I’m dark skinned. I’m quirky. I’m shy. I’m strong. I’m guarded. I’m weak at times. I’m sensual. I’m not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black.

So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress.

Loving God is like my being black. I just am. [No one says] 'You know what? I'm gonna be blacker today!' It's my culture. It's not something I put on or take off or show more. You just communicate that in the way you live your life.

I also loved that there [in Into the Forest] was a beautiful balance to it, where they were strong and survivors and doing things in the film that we normally only see men do, but they were still human and vulnerable, and they still broke and had moments of weakness. That's something that we don't often get to see in these films, either.

In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own

The Oscars are this Sunday. Host Neil Patrick Harris said he hopes the broadcast will include a 'Kanye moment.' Unfortunately a Kanye moment may not be possible because that would require a black person to be at the Oscars.

You must begin to define yourself. You must begin to define your Black heritage.

Most rappers are black men. If you're a black man, you owe something to the community that you came from. If you're rapping about the community that you came from, and you're romanticizing parts of it for the entertainment of people who don't look like you, you certainly owe something to the community.