Chance The Rapper Quotes

It is hard for a black man to just be himself. We spend so much time in defense of something that is indefensible because there is nothing to defend.

Race affects everything that I do, and everything that I create speaks to intersectionality.

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

I really wanted to be born a woman. It all started there. A South American woman. And I'm upset that I was born a white Jewish male. I've been angry since.

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.

At screenings for 'Black in America,' I've heard people say, 'Well you know, I never thought you were black until you did Katrina, and then I thought you were black.'

White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet.

Everybody comments that I'm white. I'm surprised I haven't gotten more criticism for it. I'm always expecting any day now it's gonna come. I guess I just attribute the lack of hate to people hearing the music and hearing how much I genuinely love it.

I always feel like I'm warring with my womanhood and wanting the world to be better, and with my blackness - which is the opposite of whiteness.

I had a casting director tell me to be blacker.

The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese-American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group. But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention.

The fans called me Jungleman. They said this young guy's not white. He's black in a white man's skin.

I'm surprised that more people don't emulate Rachel Dolezal and pretend to be black or members of some other minority. Our gullible society rushes to reward such status, often with jobs and money.

As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other.

People don't realize it hurts my feelings when someone looks at my hair or my eyes, and says, 'But you're not actually black. You're black, but you're not black black, because your eyes are green.' I'm like, 'What? No, no, I'm definitely black.' Even some of my closest friends have said that. It's been a bit touchy for me.

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

There was certainly, like, a rebellious, like, youthful rage in me. And there was also the fact of no getting away from fact that I am white, and you know, this is predominantly black music, you know.

When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.

I realized there was racism because people thought, 'Oh, if you like roll 'n' roll, that makes you like a white kid.'

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

I'm not a fan of identity politics.

I'm not a big fan of identity politics and sort of picking one thing and defining yourself with it.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.