Kehinde Wiley Quotes

To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.

I guess cause i'm black boy, I'm supposed to say 'peace', sing songs, and get capped on.

I never have a problem with being black. I have a problem with the easy association of what that means to some people.

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

The man does not beat your head because you got a Cadillac or because you got a Ford; he beats you because you're black!

I believe the Negro blood counts, and counts to my advantage - though it has caused me at times a life of great humiliation and sorrow.

It was rough being dark. I got heat from my own people more than anyone else. I remember going to my mom and saying, 'Why am I so black?' And she said, 'Because I'm black. You just gotta always work harder than the average bear.'

You know, people'd always ask 'Why is Jesse Jackson running for the White House?' They never seen the house I'm running from.

The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.

When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.

James Brown's life was really a metaphor for our inability to talk about matters like race and class in America.

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

Jazz is a racist musical form invented by whites to enslave blacks.

My only crime was being born black - or being born black in Alabama.

It doesn't even feel like racism is real. It just feels like the weirdest ploy, like we're just being had on so many levels. It's even kind of funny when you think about it. A reason not to like someone is 'because you're black.' C'mon, man. How dumb is that?

Growing up in a system that tells you just because of your skin colour you are not good enough - you learn at a very young age to toughen up.

I've said numerous times the hardest job in America isn't being a professional athlete. It's not being a matador or having some job that puts your life at risk. The hardest job in America is being black, because it's the one thing you can't outrun.

I've gotten stopped for reckless eyeballing, for staring too hard. These officers think they're Tarzan and this is a jungle, that all the animals need to be tamed.

Living under the perpetual and pervasive threat of racism seems, for black men and black women, to quite literally reduce lifespans.

I am not an American; I am one of twenty-two million black people who are victims of Americanism.

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.

If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other.