Black Quotes - Page 8

• America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights movement and the developments in the '70s and '80s. We have witnessed a great expansion of the black middle class.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Rights, Collective Unconscious, Class

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Obama sees the world in two ways: from the black perspective and from the white perspective. He was raised as a black man, whose culture he has self-consciously adopted. But he was reared largely by his white grandparents. He lived a kind of racially bipartisan experience, and he will be able to speak a language that resonates with both communities.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Men, Two, White

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Real, People, Watches

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• Light-skinned black people are seen to be closer to white people. The allegiance to lighter-skinned people has operated in a very destructive way that we have internalized ourselves inside black communities. You look at many of the prominent black people in this society who have been able to do well. Many have been lighter-skinned.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Light, White, People

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• But for poor black people and working-class black people, it is a much more difficult way to go. The over-incarceration of black people is just intolerable. When you look at the disparity in terms of education and access to fair schooling, it is horrible. If this would happen to white people in this country, it would not be tolerated.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Country, Class, White

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• We live in a consumer culture, and Black Friday is like the July 4th of that culture. It might be good not to live in this culture, but it terms of what we can do to make people safer at big sales, it seems more useful to try to avoid dangerous crowd conditions.

  John Seabrook

  Friday, 4th Of July, People

  "Ask the Author Live: John Seabrook on Crowds". live chat, www.newyorker.com. January 28, 2011.

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• I was four or five, and my mother gave me a big black tablet, because I kept complaining that I was bored. She said, "Then write something. Then you can read it." In fact, I had just learned to read, so this was a thrilling kind of moment. The idea that I could write something - and then read it!

  Joan Didion

  Mother, Writing, Ideas

  Interview with Sheila Heti, www.believermag.com. December 2011.

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• In the first two years of my career, there were a lot of restraints on what I could do. I couldn't wear certain colors of lipstick, like bright pink, dark pink or red; [my lips] had to be natural. Eventually, I stopped communicating with certain people at the label, and did exactly what I wanted to do. And that was to cut my hair, dye it black, change my clothes, change my sound. Really to just express myself.

  Rihanna

  Cutting, Dark, Hair

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I'm still learning who I am. One minute I have black hair, the next it's red. One day I'm wearing Converse sneakers, and the next I'm in the hippie look.

  Miley Cyrus

  Hippie, Hair, Who I Am

  "Miley Cyrus: America's Most Famous Girl Grows Up". Interview with Laurie Sandell, www.glamour.com. March 29, 2009.

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• One of the worst things that happened to black people in America historically is integration. People ask me why I say that and I tell them it's because we gave up all of our control.

  David Banner

  America, People, Worst

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• I appreciate the female foot, but I've never said that I have a foot fetish. But I am a lower track guy. I like legs' I like booties'. I have a black male sexuality.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Feet, Track, Appreciate

  "Quentin Tarantino - The "Inglourious Basterds" Interview with Kam Williams". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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• Sometimes during my set I invite volunteers up on stage to get speed-roasted and I'm worried that I may have hundreds of people rushing the stage all at once. Luckily I'm a black belt in karate and I can fend them off.

  Jeff Ross

  Rushing, Volunteer, People

  Source: www.spin.com

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• I was not allowed to be an individual. I was black and I was a woman - and I was a black woman.

  Shola Lynch

  Black Women, Individual

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Look at the piano. You'll notice that there are white notes and black notes. Figure out the difference between them and you'll be able to make whatever kind of music you want.

  George Gershwin

  White, Differences, Piano

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Nothing is more powerful than the black church experience. A good choir and a good sermon in the black church, it's pretty hard not to be move and be transported.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Moving, Church

  Interview with Cathleen Falsani, www.beliefnet.com. March 27, 2004.

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• Faith should be pulled into the public arena when it affects how we live. If it doesn't, it does no earthly good. What does my faith say about the fact that a girl can't be a nuclear physicist because she's black and from the inner city? My faith says, no, that's not what God intended. It pulls it back into the public arena the idea that there's got to be something fair for all of us.

  Jeremiah Wright

  Girl, Cities, Ideas

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Black people have this thing about calling themselves apes and monkeys I know they get real (whatever) and I don't blame em'. But I feel like I'm a brute. I am, but I'm smart though. I'm not a dummy.

  Sean Price

  Real, Smart, People

  Source: www.okayplayer.com

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• I think at the time, my radicalization was not through growing up Chinese, but through the role that the black people were playing at the beginning of World War II, when they had started the "Double V for Victory" movement - for democracy at home as well as abroad.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Growing Up, War, Home

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I keep telling everyone that I want to start a revolution but no one is taking me seriously. If I had black skin and an afro, would you take me seriously? If I was an Arab waving a hand grenade, would you take me seriously?

  Madonna Ciccone

  Hands, Skins, Revolution

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Such techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers.

  David Foster Wallace

  Self, Ethos, People

  Source: news.stlpublicradio.org

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• In your late teens and early twenties, everything is idealism. Everything should just work in black and white. That's good. You need that. I think most revolutions are started by people in their teens and twenties.

  LeCrae

  Black And White, Thinking, People

  Source: www.artistdirect.com

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• Things are shifting; man is evolving in many different ways. The Internet has created a portal for people to connect with each other in a way they never could have before. When it comes to African-American or black films, it's different because there is a model that you can actually look at, an equation that shows that these films earn money.

  Forest Whitaker

  Men, People, African American

  Source: deadline.com

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• One thing my mother always instilled in me is to always know my worth. Don't settle for less. She used to say to me 'Iman, no is a complete sentence, learn to say no. You don't have to explain it you don't have to say anything after it. It's a complete sentence.' So when I came to America 1975, I found out that the black models were being paid less than white models. So the first thing I did was say I'm not going to do the job unless I'm paid the same amount.

  Iman Abdulmajid

  Mother, Jobs, White

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• I've always thought it would be fun to update "Hansel and Gretel." I'd have these white parents in the suburbs with an income of fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Daddy loses his job, and the wicked stepmother says, "We could get along, we could keep our Mastercharge, if you'd just get rid of those shitty kids." Finally the father hires a limo and tells the driver, "Drop 'em off on Lenox Avenue in Harlem at two in the morning." These two little white kids land there. They're menaced. And this supposedly nice black lady says, "Would you like some candy?"

  Stephen King

  Morning, Jobs, Fun

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• I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.

  Stephen King

  Kids, Thinking, Civilization

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