Blackness Quotes

• Blackness is a state of mind and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white women. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.

  Halle Berry

  White, People, Community

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

  Steven Biko

  Fighting, Black, Use

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• I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation.

  Gil Scott-Heron

  Pride, Men, Expression

  Gil Scott-Heron (1990). “So Far, So Good”

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• If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Dark, Used

  "Norwegian Wood". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1987.

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• I believe that this nation can only heal from the wounds of racism if we all begin to love blackness. And by that I don't mean that we love only that which is best within us, but that we're also able to love that which is faltering, which is wounded, which is contradictory, incomplete.

  Bell Hooks

  Believe, Mean, Racism

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• I'm
  gonna spread out
  over America
  intrude
  my proud blackness
  all
  over the place.

  Mari Evans

  America, Proud, Spread

  Mari Evans (2007). “Continuum: New and Selected Poems”

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• There's a little blackness inside all of us.

  Cassia Leo

  Littles

  Cassia Leo (2014). “Black Box”, p.38, Gloss Publishing

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• We tend to misunderstand the colour black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself.

  Rachel Pollack

  Mean, Energy Of Life, Evil

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• The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity.

  David O. McKay

  Heart, Night, Hatred

  LDS General Conference, October 1964.

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• If you have money and you have fame, but you don't have any confidence in your blackness, then it's all for nothing.

  Paul Mooney

  Fame, Ifs

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• My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.

  Michelle Obama

  White, Trying, Matter

  "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community". Senior thesis, Princeton University, p. 14-15, 1985.

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• We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.

  Saul Williams

  Race, Ideas, Black

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• Blackness is an ocean, a universe, a possibility that can never be exhausted. And so we have to constantly reaffirm the necessity of excavation, of archiving and curating, but also exploring, and understanding afresh and learning for the first time what it is that we need to know, and what the limits and boundaries are, and what the themes and preoccupations should be, and what the redemptive character of that erudition is. I find myself in the exciting position of doing all that, and at the same time having the obligation to explain to white people what the deal is.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ocean, Character, White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I embrace my blackness, just as I do my conservatism and my Christianity, but I don't want to be defined or pigeonholed by any one of the many elements that make up my character.

  J. C. Watts

  Character, Elements, Want

  "'What Color Is a Conservative?' by J.C. Watts". abcnews.go.com. October 22.

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• Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Opportunity, Color, Racism

  Patricia Hill Collins (2004). “Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism”, p.178, Routledge

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

  Jamie Foxx

  Everyday, Negative, Why Not

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• Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mean, Men, America

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2010.

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• For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Sleep, Depth, Needs

  ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH (1963). “NORTH TO THE ORIENT”

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• We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Uplifting, Moving, Tears

  Michael Eric Dyson (2009). “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America”, p.231, Basic Books

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• Nothing but blackness above And nothing that moves but the cars... God, if you wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars!

  Louis Untermeyer

  Stars, Moving, Car

  LOUIS UNTERMEYER (1921). “MODERN AMERICAN POETRY”

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• If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Thinking, Race

  "Women’s Rights and Human Rights" by Judi Jennings, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 26, 2009.

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• Sometimes I feel like I'm not solid. I'm hollow. There's nothing behind my eyes. I'm a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence.

  Sylvia Plath

  Eye, Silence, Negative

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• The blackness of darkness, forever.

  Beth Gibbons

  Forever, Darkness

  "Song: 'Wandering star'". 1994.

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• I love the night passionately... I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Night, Silence, Ears

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• When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

  Stephen Fry

  House, Despair, Looks

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