Kelela Quotes

As a black woman, I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful; the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change.

Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us.

Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities.

I think that it is too common for white feminists to say, 'We want some diversity. Come join our movement about gender, but we want you to check the class and race at the door.' And you can't undo that braid of race, class, and gender: all three intersect with each other, so it's important for more education to be done about that.

Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she's a black woman, seh's in deep trouble.

It's incredibly hard out there for women of color.

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.

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together.

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker.

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

The reason why you were allowed to get away with that in the '60s and '70s is because this country's racist administrative policies were such that rich white kids were getting exemptions. I said no exemptions.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

There's not a white man in this country who can say he never benefited from being white.

We have inherited a social system based on male domination of politics and economics. We call for the replacement of the cultural ethics of domination and control, with more cooperative ways of interacting which respect differences of opinion and gender.

The race question in America has often been about race, but it has equally often been about power.

I think we need to not speak over black women, not assign them labels.

I realized that with African American people, where we've been blocked from being all that God meant for us to be, I don't have time to be patient.

During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas.

Black women's intersectional experiences of racism and sexism have been a central but forgotten dynamic in the unfolding of feminist and antiracist agendas.

Racism is over in the 'Star Trek' future, but they found a way to comment on sexism and racism in the present day in such a subversive and smart way, you know?

Many thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far from the case.

We need to dismantle the systems that were built on racism, that were built on the backs of black people.

A lot of black men get in desperate situations because they don't see any other avenues to make it. You make a couple of mistakes today, that's all she wrote. You're not going to get a good job; nobody's gonna hire a felon. You can't even vote. They just want to silence you.

I know how difficult it is to be not just a woman, but a black woman, and I know how much we get attacked and our voices aren't heard. I experience it every single day.

My hope is that 'Blk Girl Soldier' is a freedom song for black women today who are fighting the macro- and microaggressions of daily life in our city/country/world.