Joe Morton Quotes

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

It's funny that black men, at first, were worried about a show called 'Girlfriends' because they thought that black men were gonna get bashed. They realized, 'Wait a minute - we're respected in this story.'

Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?

I like representing different kinds of black people - showing they exist.

It's very necessary, showing the positive aspect of a black father. We see a lot of black women being the head of the household and holding the house down, but I think we need to have those images because there are black fathers out there who are doing the same thing and who are the glue to the family. That's who Black Lightning is.

It's people who look like me, just seeing representation of everyone. I didn't get that when I was young. I only saw one black girl that was on a Disney show, that was known for being the sassy, coocoo, that type of girl.

I'm a breath of fresh air, and there hasn't been something this black on TV for a very long time.

I liked the fact that there were so many different representations of black women and black men in the movie. It wasn't like we all had the same agenda.

Black and awkward is the worst, because black people are stereotyped as being anything but awkward in mainstream media... Black people are always portrayed to be cool or overly dramatic, anything but awkward.

A romance novel focuses exclusively on two people falling in love. It can't be about a woman caring for her aging mother or something like that. It can have that element, but it has to be primarily about the male-female relationship.

Finally, the complexities of black relationships are being portrayed in television and film.

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.

Hollywood needs to recognise all shades of African American beauty.

In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

Barack Obama makes me feel good to be a black man.

Do you have any idea what Ali meant to black people? He was the leader of a nation, the leader of Black America. As a young black, at times I was ashamed of my color; I was ashamed of my hair. And Ali made me proud.

American television, for all its faults, still has a black presence in shows and even in commercials. You'll see black people in automobile ads, black women starring on their own television shows. We don't see that on British television.

I have lots of hopes for black actors in general, whether they be on TV or on stage or in movies, and that is that we move beyond the tokenism of what it means to be black in a particular set of circumstances.

When it comes to a love story, you're like, 'I've been in love before.' So it's closer to you than the other stuff, and for me, that can be less comfortable.

'America's Dad' is what we called Bill Cosby. And we called him that because, well, what a revolutionary way to put it. Through him, we were thumbing our noses at the long, dreary history for black men in America by elevating this one to a paternal Olympus. In the 1980s, he made the black American family seem 'just like us.'

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.

It's so important to create roles and characters and projects that feature black people in a way that's not specifically targeted towards the niche market, which is, like, a black movie is created, and it's produced and pitched so that only black people will watch it.

There were so few examples of Asian or Asian-American lead characters on American TV or even in the movies. And the ones that have existed for so long were either stereotypical or offensive in some way, or just not reflective of the lives of people in the community.