Bell Hooks Quotes

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

A lot of the time, black people, we don't introduce ourselves as black.

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

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

There's always been a quiet conversation and joke that if you're not hard, if you're not from impoverished neighborhoods, if you're not certain constructs of a black stereotype, then you not black.

Unlike Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Jackie Robinson never tried to convert himself into an acceptable black man.

There is a multitude of experiences that make up the black experience.

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.'

There was always a struggle with being Asian and not being Asian enough. It's going to be down to me to own my race.

I did not disregard my culture, if I did, it was the white American culture, and I accepted my true culture, when I accepted Mohammed Ali, because this is a black name, Islam is the black man's religion, and so I would like to say, that I would like to clarify that point that I reclaimed my real culture, and that's being a black man and wearing a black name with a black body, and not a white name, so I would never say that I didn't disown my culture.

Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.

[My grandmother] is a typical white person.

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

The less I talk about being black, the better.

Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.

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.

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.

As a black woman who grows up in a predominantly white neighborhood, you learn how to perform a 'good' version of yourself. And then when you're with your home girls, you're saying all kinds of stuff that sounds all kinds of crazy, but you understand each other because you're speaking the way that you're comfortable with.

There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.

To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

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

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.

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