Rashid Johnson Quotes

Well who's black and what is a black person?

What I really hoped to do with my work was to at least be able to define my relationship to race.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

I always wonder if my kids will say they're mixed or black.

I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.

I'm black because that's the way the world sees me.

Regardless of what I've ever done or will ever do, I'll always be black.

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.

Blackness better defines who I am philosophically and socially than whiteness does.

When I started, I was aware of using the black as a rhetorical device. It's understanding that black people come in a wide range of colors, but you find instances in a lot of black literature in which the blackness is used as a metaphor. In some places, you can find an extreme blackness used as a descriptive.

I'm a white guy in a black sport. I really forget about it until someone asks me about it. I'm simply competing in a sport that I love.

As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.'

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

Black people, we are not this monolithic group, you know?

Sometimes I read that I'm not 100 per cent Chinese, because I don't look all that Chinese. That's a strange one - I am Chinese.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

I don't mind being black. I'm black out loud. It's more than the people that they are, it's the condition that they represent.

Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don't know that I'm most people's definition of what a black person is. I'm mixed, yes, but in the world I'm defined as black before I'm defined white. I've never been called white.

If faux liberal white guys want to support and defend Obama, by all means please do so. But I would suggest they try to limit that support to matters of policy and not perspectives on race.

My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor.

I am definitely a person of color.

We see through the eyes of children that they're not talking about race the way we grown folks are. They're not talking about color or how much melanin is in someone's skin.