Black Identity Quotes

When I'm asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires - Mali, Songhai, Egypt - had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group.

My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African American, so I'm pretty mixed. My nickname in high school was United Nations. I was fine with it, even though I identify as a black woman. 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'm so proud to be a black woman; I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

For whatever reason, gay characters, or characters that deal with sexuality issues, who are black, in 'black films'... are typically not dealt with with any sort of complexity. They're exoticized: their being gay is sort of the point.

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

I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.

Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind?

Black women, dark skin women are the original beautiful people to me.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

There has been a struggle to reclaim the African self. That struggle has been on the part of a minority of dedicated African-Americans who never gave up our African identity at no time during our stay here.

I learned about poise and dignity, and I learned about what it means to be an African-American in television and what that requires in terms of what kind of position you take for yourself and how you define your own reality in a world that is still finding its footing, to say the least.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

Shakespeare must be a black girl.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

My first college roommate greeted me with a shocked silence followed by, 'So... you're black.'

Black power means Black dignity

White people, you did not get a receipt for niggas, you can not return us!

I identify as black.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

Our leader will not be a white man with a Black heart, nor a Black man with a white heart, but a Black man with a Black heart.

With Othello, Shakespeare posed this problem of a black man in a white society in the role that he's playing. And Shakespeare gave Othello such dignity - he came not from - as he said - not from hate but from honor, from a sense of his own human dignity. And to me, to my mind, there could be no greater character played.

You'll always see me at a political rally and the black strip club; I'm gonna represent smoking weed and supporting Trayvon Martin on my record, because I'm a whole man.

Where I'm from in Harlem, everybody look like a rapper.

I was called everything ugly and black in the world. Man, those where some tough times. They called me Fat Albert, Magilla Gorilla, black ape. It all hurt.