Ryan Coogler Quotes

Some people in America don't ever interact with black people outside of television, so we should give them real, believable characters.

Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.

When I go to business meetings, I'm still told way too often by some receptionist, 'The mail room is downstairs,' to believe that racial perceptions don't still exist. But I figure there are always going to be knuckleheads no matter how many of their herd get stuck in the tar pits of progress.

Kids that I went to school with didn't know how to interact with black people like that. There were only, like, three or four black kids in the class.

Since anti-racist individuals did not control mass media, the media became the primary tool that would be used and is still used to convince black viewers, and everyone else, of black inferiority.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they're looting, if you see a white family it says they're looking for food.

It's something that black men still go through to this day, which is women clutching their purses, hitting the lock button on store, or just basic attitudes. And even as a U.S. congressman, as a black man, it is very, very frustrating, and you build up an internal anger about it that you can't act on.

This is really honest: I have to remind myself not to look another black man as a threat.

I'm about looking at each of those perceived menacing black men that you see in the streets all over the place, people that you oftentimes will walk past without assuming that they have the same humanity, fears that we all do.

We're raised to believe that black men have to be one specific way.

Some things you never really fully understand unless you are actually black and you experience how it feels when someone treats you differently based on your skin colour.

There's a big difference between being racist and racially insensitive.

On TV, as in life, white folks are allowed to make mistakes, but usually, black people aren't.

I grew up in a predominantly white community - Hinsdale, Illinois - and given that, I feel blessed because I could still count my experiences with blatant racism on two hands. I thought racism was the substitute teacher picking on you because she assumes that you're a delinquent, and she doesn't know you have the highest score in the class.

It's my job to accept my youth, to spread my story, to let people know who I am as an individual, because there's so many people who are blinded and think less of me because of my skin color.

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.

For instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."

I think that show will go down in history... people will scratch their heads and say 'How did this ever get on the air?' I mean, they finally have a planet that's populated with a black race and then they present them as savage warriors, and the men want the white girl!

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to.

You know and we have about 60 to 70 percent black men in prison today and it's because of the negativity they have in their own hearts.

It's no surprise that White people say things when they are together about Black people.

We know that we're not supposed to be racially biased, and we don't want to think of ourselves as racially biased, so we tell ourselves a different story.

I think that every minority in the United States of America knows everything about the dominant culture. From the time you can think, you are bombarded with images from TV, film, magazines, newspapers.

There are still plenty of movie people peddling black stereotypes. I guess Tyler Perry's probably the most massively successful.