Octavia E. Butler Quotes

In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.

I don't think that the country is ever ready to have the conversation about race.

I'm used to being the only black guy. I've seriously walked onstage, looked out in the audience, 15,000 people - and I'm the only one in the place. It's no big deal. My whole career's been like that.

I'm not a token black guy.

When I signed for Spurs, I was the only black player in the team.

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

I never though much about race.

Race always comes up in the conversation of Detroit.

I've never excluded myself because of color. It's never been part of the radar, when I look at anything I do. The majority of the roles that I've played have had very little to do with being black. It doesn't matter what color you are.

I am astonished at the strong feeling of dislike and contempt—I might almost say hatred—which the bulk of the whites have for their black neighbours.

Race is everything.

What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists?

I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.

No single race has a monopoly on racism.

My concerns have always been to do the best job I can. But I am conscious that I'm a black manager and I am conscious that there is a profile that goes with that.

Usually when you're Asian and you're on set, you're the only Asian there. Either you're the token Asian or you're the Asian sidekick.

Unfortunately, I don't know many black people.

I think that for the most part, black people specifically have sort of been used as props in TV shows as a way to move story along or as a way to make things more entertaining.

I grew up going to a school where there weren't a lot of black kids. And so my mother, from a very, very young age, has sensitized me to race.

Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people!

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

If we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest.

Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means.