Blackness Quotes - Page 4

• The anti-blackness has generated new forms of youth involvement in anti-whiteness, which in some cases is appalling.

  Alex Haley

  Youth, Form, Cases

  Source: www.cbn.com

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• all outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever - fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Struggle, People, Individuality

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• The privileged position of whiteness doesn't allow for someone with one drop of Negro blood to be considered white, which allows whiteness to be a fairly pure category while blackness has to absorb an expansive reality of representation.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Reality, Blood, White

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.

  Lucretius

  Men, Leaving, Darkness

  "De Rerum Natura". Book by Lucretius, III. 37,

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• One of the facets of growing up the way I did, I never had the experience of being solely in the black community. Even my family, my mother is what they call Creole, so she's part French, part black, and grew up in Louisiana. It's a very specific kind of blackness that is different than what is traditionally thought of as the black community and black culture. So, I never felt a part of whatever that was.

  Justin Simien

  Mother, Growing Up, Community

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

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• What I preserved in the figures [at Invisible Man] are those white eyes and white teeth, because that's still connected to the way in which blackness, in the extreme, has been stigmatized and the way it was often joked that you couldn't see black people in the dark until they had their eyes open or were smiling.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Eye, Dark, Men

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• [My picture A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ] was a way of demonstrating that there was a broad range of possibilities and fairly unlimited utility for a black figure that didn't have to comprise its blackness in order to preserve a place in the field of representation.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Artist, Self, Order

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Religious, Ignorance

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• Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

  Paul Celan

  Holocaust, Black, Bitterness

  Paul Celan (1980). “Paul Celan: poems”

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• Knowing that "me" is inextricably linked to blackness, [I try to enjoy] the process of expanding beyond the expected boundaries set by existing culture, norms and media.

  Baratunde Thurston

  Media, Knowing, Trying

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• I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don't want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down." It's also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.

  Michael Emerson

  Sunday, Hair, Organization

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
  and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
  and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
  and the night cold and the night long and the river
  to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
  and blackness ahead

  Robert Hayden

  Running, Fall, Night

  Robert Hayden (2013). “Collected Poems”, p.59, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap, the coffee, the rice, to iron the pants, to braid the hair, to pull the day's water up from the well, to boil water for tea, to wash the children for school, to pull the vegetables and start the walk to market, to run to catch the bus for the work that is paid. I don't know when most women sleep.

  Adrienne Rich

  Running, Children, Twilight

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• Very, very slowly, the dwarf remnants of what was once our mighty sun will cool and dim, until it embarks on its final metamorphosis, gradually solidifying into a crystal of extraordinary rigidity. Eventually it will fade out completely, merging quietly into the blackness of space.

  Paul Davies

  Dwarves, Space, Finals

  Paul Davies (2008). “The Last Three Minutes: Conjectures About The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe”, p.48, Basic Books

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• True, I used to see a lot of hope. I saw men tear down the veils behind which the truth had been hidden. But then the same men, when they have power in their hands at last, began to find the veils useful. They made many more. Life has not changed. Only some people have been growing, becoming different, that is all. After a youth spent fighting the white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all the blackness in the big old slave castle?

  Ayi Kwei Armah

  Real, Fighting, Men

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• That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.

  Sarah Dessen

  Eye, Dark, Light

  "Lock and Key". Book by Sarah Dessen, April 22, 2008.

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• I am lucky. I did not choose this life. It chose me. It's strange like that; not picking my path, but rather easing into the water and letting it carry me where it will. Yes, there will be nights where I feel like my destiny is at my fingertips and there will be nights I wish the lights were off and I could just make these sounds in the dark. Still, I will always be there, wherever there might be, staring into blackness hoping the blackness stares back at me.

  Andrew McMahon

  Dark, Night, Destiny

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• I cling to my anger with every ounce of humanity left in my ruined body, but it's no use. It slips away, like a wave from shore. I am pondering this sad fact when I realize the blackness of sleep is circling my head. It's been there awhile, biding it's time and growing closer with each revolution. I give up on rage, which at this point has become a formality, and make a mental note to get angry again in the morning. Then I let myself drift, because there's really no fighting it.

  Sara Gruen

  Morning, Giving Up, Sleep

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• Hour of Stars (1920) The round silence of night, one note on the stave of the infinite. Ripe with lost poems, I step naked into the street. The blackness riddled by the singing of crickets: sound, that dead will-o'-the-wisp, that musical light perceived by the spirit. A thousand butterfly skeletons sleep within my walls. A wild crowd of young breezes over the river.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Stars, Wall, Butterfly

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• None of us should be ashamed to speak of our class power or lack of it. Overcoming fear, even the fear of being immodest, and acting courageously to bring issues of class- especially radical standpoints – into the discourse of blackness is a gesture of militant defiance, one that runs counter to bourgeois insistence that we think of “money” in particular and class in general as private matters.

  Bell Hooks

  Running, Thinking, Class

  bell hooks (2012). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.179, Routledge

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• Love comes in every color, but the fact is...
  I never needed 50 Shades of Grey,
  Just turn the lights down low and give me every shade of blackness.

  Phonte

  Rap, Light, Color

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• Will moved to object, but it was too late; Henry had already pressed the button. There was a blinding flare of light and a whooshing sound, and the room was plunged into blackness. Tessa gave a yelp of surprise, and Jem laughed softly. "Am I blind?" Will's voice floated out of the darkness, tinged with annoyance. "I'm not going to be at all pleased if you've blinded me, Henry.

  Cassandra Clare

  Light, Voice, Darkness

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

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• I think about my choice. Either outcome is bleak. If I stay and live through high school, go to college, get a job, what will ever change? This blackness inside will never go away. I don't make friends; I'll always be alone. If I go, at least there's hope of peace. Chance of a new and better life on the other side.

  Julie Anne Peters

  Jobs, School, College

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• In my dream it was very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Edward's skin. I couldn't see his face, just his back as he walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to him; no matter how loud I called, he never turned. Troubled, I woke in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again for what seemed like a very long time. After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Dream, Sleep, Dark

  "Twilight". Book by Stephenie Meyer, October 5, 2005.

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• It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.

  Charles Duke

  Space, Texture, Earth

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