Cheo Hodari Coker Quotes

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

I've always had an interest in complicating the way that we perceive the black character, whether it's the black academic or scholar or activist or black intellectual.

As much as I'd love to believe that we are 'post-racial' - an idea that really gained traction after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 - I can never escape the fact that in the world I am perceived as a 'black man' and, in certain parts of the world, as a 'black gay man.'

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

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

There are so many people who have this idea of who I am because I'm black.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor.

I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.

I'm black because that's the way the world sees me.

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.

I know I'm a black actor, but really, I'm an actor who happens to be black.

I have to show off my struggle so that people accept that I'm black. No matter that every single room I go to, I'm usually the darkest person there... I kind of resent that mentality. I'm just an individual.

I'm a white guy in a black sport. I really forget about it until someone asks me about it. I'm simply competing in a sport that I love.

A lot of the things I do deal with my race, but my race is who I am. I'm an American kid who grew up listening to predominantly hip-hop. I will talk about hip-hop as the music I grew up listening to, and I think sometimes people like to put it as, 'Oh, well, he's talking about black things.' And, yeah, they are, but that's my American identity.

It's fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility - this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs]... This invisibility - this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time - is the greatest source of my longing.

Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.

Because I want every kid to be viewed as a person rather than as a member of a certain race does not mean that I'm not black enough. . . . Do they want me to be positive just for black kids and negative for everybody else?

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.

Black comics, they only watch Black comedians. You're a comedian; you're not just a Black comedian. You're a comedian. I try to get that through to everybody.

The idea of voluntary segregation went against every value I had been taught. What did being born black have to do with excellence?

If you're black, you can't just be ordinary. All successful black people are extraordinary.

I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.

There were certain expectations that were assumed of me as a young black American 20th-century - then 20th-century artist.