Gallant Quotes

I was never an R&B artist. People coined me one, but that's because, especially if you're in the States, if you're black and you sing, then you're R&B.

We are - as artists, we are racialized through genre and called black - without being called black - through genre.

I'm aware that if I make a country album and release it, and it gets on the Grammys, the Grammys are going to put it in the Urban category. Just my blackness automatically sets it in there.

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.

I think it's very important that we don't sound like militants. Often what we do is we give a comment, and because it comes across with passion, then we're 'angry black people.'

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

I really bristle when I get called to events and people introduce me as one of the top black anchors in the country. You know, that's very insulting. I'm striving to be one of the best anchors in the country. Handcuff me like that. What you're saying is, 'You're black. You should only expect to rise to the level of the best at being black.'

Here's the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it's put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don't call them a white film. I'm trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

Going into a room and saying, 'I'm a black lesbian' - it's a strike against you.

If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I'd be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.

Rock'n'roll is nothing but Boogie Woogie with stuff on top of it. And if you're black, they name it rhythm'n'blues, and if you're white, they name it rock'n'roll. So, I don't give a... You know.

White liberals are the most racist people there are, because they put blacks in a box and insist that they think one way - and if they don't, they attack them as illegitimate, all the while denying that their policies destroy blacks.

Being a black woman, I've often felt I've been judged by my sex and my race, and I have always known that it shouldn't hamper me.

In the music industry it's just you're either Black or white, and this is the box you get put in.

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

A black boxer's career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: "But it's only fiction, only entertainment."

In Florida I was illiterate, Boxing Authority didn't want me, then they had a special psychiatrist to come to Kentucky, they checked and they didn't want me. But as soon as my name was Mohammed Ali, as soon as I announced I was a Muslim, then all of a sudden I became smart.

I didn't get the Russian Jew part because they didn't think I looked Russian or Jewish enough - and, mind you, I am both Russian and Jewish - so I was cast as the racist Mexican.

People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors.

What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?