Sterling K. Brown Quotes

With my representation of a black woman in the world today, there's such a powerful response from my community about what it means to have black representation on television. That response is so overwhelming and so strong that I just have to express my own gratitude for it, because I understand the necessity for it.

I was the first black man on television.

Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.

'Roots' did show that the audience would be receptive to black talent and a black story.

Television had a black president long before Barack Obama.

Barack Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 were dismissed by some of his critics as merely symbolic for African Americans. But there is nothing 'mere' about symbols.

The truth of the matter is, there were shows that depicted black characters that were on in the '90s, and they gave everybody a glimpse into the black experience. And then they disappeared.

I think that sometimes we put undue pressure on stories featuring people of color, and I hope we get to a point where it's not such a rarity to see a person of color be the hero of a story, so that it can just be a story and not have to carry so much weight.

Regardless of what you feel about Obama and his politics - screw all that. The fact of the matter is, he was the first black guy to be the president of the United States. The history is still being made.

If our culture is so often readily and easily appropriated, imagine what happens when we embrace our full blackness and know that our contributions are just as important to the shaping of the country and, more broadly, the world.

In 1965, Cosby had become the first black man ever to star in a prime-time television show; he was conscious enough of his non-dissolved, traditional nuclear family that he made it the foundation of his public persona, his comedy act, and eventually of his blockbuster sitcom.

You could feel America starting to ease up a little bit on racism, against blacks in certain pockets, and then suddenly The Cosby Show bubbled up and it was the right time for it.

I'm old enough to remember when there were no black quarterbacks - there were no blacks on TV. I hope my son or daughter doesn't have to be as fixated on race as I am, because he or she will grow up in freer times.

What makes Luke Cage unique isn't him being black. Yes, he is black, but he has other things.

When I was growing up, all these superheroes were white. On some level, you put that out of your mind... but as you get older, you realize it's a very one-sided affair. So I'm very glad to see that these movies are becoming more diversified.

I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.

I want authenticity. And rarely do actors - more specifically, black actors - get a chance to be authentic on film and television.

I think that's what's so great about 'Jessica James' is you get to sit back and take a moment and realize that this person is black. And some days, this character wakes up and feels black, and some days, she doesn't. That is, for me, a fully black experience.

I think to be very blunt about it, in a lot of that support is a desire for convergence of a black skin with the United States Presidency, with power on that level - the idea is that to have a black in that office leading a largely white country would be redemptive for America.

The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people - to black people.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

I believe in 'Black' as much as I believe in 'Bajirao Mastani.'

Part of the reason everyone is freaking out over 'Black Panther' is because we've never seen it. We have two thousand years of stories, and we've never seen it.

I'd never been around or seen a black showrunner, and in some ways you wish that it wasn't a big deal.