Kenya Barris Quotes

Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman

As a teenager, my blackness was also questioned by some of the life choices I made that weren't considered to be 'black' choices. For example, joining the swim team when it is a known fact that 'black folk don't swim'; or choosing to become a vegetarian when blacks clearly love chicken.

When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.

White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.

At screenings for 'Black in America,' I've heard people say, 'Well you know, I never thought you were black until you did Katrina, and then I thought you were black.'

I have a very vivid memory of the way my parents spoke, and the 50's that I grew up in are closer to the 20's, I think, than today in many, many ways.

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

When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store.

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

Mr. Chairman, I am from the South, and I never knew a Republican was white until I was twenty-one years old.

For some reason, we're brainwashed to think if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don't break the law, you're not a good black person.

Let's face it, us '60s folks had pretty high expectations.

We all see color. We do. And anyone who says he doesn't see color is confused or isn't telling the truth. Except... and I know how this sounds, but I can't remember any point in my life where I saw other people and thought of their color.

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.

I have dealt with three generations of players, each one of them was different.

With my face paint on, I don't look like a regular black dude.

I think the younger generation's view on race is slightly more evolved. It's a category far down on the list of how they see themselves.

When you're dealing with African Americans, family is everything. Because we spend so much time talking about how one treats one's family. Telling a black person that you haven't talked to your mother in a week is probably different than it is with other races because people will look at you different.

In the end, so much of what I wanted to do was to have a body of work that exhaustively looked at black American notions of masculinity: how we look at black men - how they're perceived in public and private spaces - and to really examine that, going from every possible angle.

The only time my Dad ever said I might have not gotten something because of how I look was when I auditioned for Tyler Perry's 'Meet the Browns.' My dad didn't think I was 'black enough' for the show. My dad isn't the most politically correct person.

When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents' friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or 'Do you have TV in Alaska?'

For me personally, I have vitiligo, so my whole career, it's always been this very odd debate: 'Does she want to be white? Is she white and black? Is her mum white?' It's always been this question of my background, my race, and what I stand for.

Obama a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.