Kevin Eubanks Quotes

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

I was fortunate to be raised in Seattle, which was amazing, but that doesn't take away from the fact I was still a black kid growing up in America.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.

It's more dangerous to be black in America...If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk in a way that you have to be corrected.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

In America, I feel black with all of the rubbish that comes with it.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

So many white people don't want to talk about race; it's uncomfortable. Many reason that slavery happened more than a century ago, and people alive today had nothing to do with it. But the particulars of these stories, from slavery to segregation to civil rights and mass incarceration, are at the marrow of life in America today.

I spent my life navigating systems built upon me - a black child in America - not making it out.

If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.

The question that white people need to ask ourselves is not if we were shaped by the forces of racism, but how.

Every black man in Chicago walks through the world differently, and I think what young black boys do is observe, and that's what gives them their road map.

I hope that audiences understand that there is a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address, that there has always been a precariousness to black lives in this country that we need to address. In fact, our country is built on the precariousness of black lives, the disposability of black lives.

We have to undo the millions of little white lies that America told itself and the world about the American Black man.

I love being black in America, and especially being black in Hollywood.

It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda.

The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.

So for a long time I closed my eyes to the possibility of America having a white voice.

Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.

It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it.

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.

Terrorism is not new to black people.

I don't think people in America understand race, and how deep the hooks of whiteness there are in our consciousness.

The trials my father went through were things most young black males have to go through. There was nothing he shielded from me, because it doesn't matter how you grow up, those who oppress will oppress. It's all completely relatable; everyone feels NWA.

It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.