A Quote by Clarence Major
Despite the obstacles of race and class, I was always taught that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. African-American writers, for me, were a beacon, a guiding force.
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I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.
I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.
I always enjoyed the training more than I did the racing. There was a high level of anxiety in racing that I did not enjoy. Training runs set me FREE. I could imagine the race in my mind and race as if it were the actual race.
We were in an atmosphere in the household that you could accomplish anything you set your mind to. If you were willing to put in the hard work, nothing was beyond your grasp.
The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.
I've always found that anything worth achieving will always have obstacles in the way and you've got to have that drive and determination to overcome those obstacles on route to whatever it is that you want to accomplish.
Despite the gender stereotypes in the '80s, my race-car-driving dad taught me that I could do whatever my brother could.
Most anything I've ever set my mind to, I could accomplish.
Race is still a powerful force in this country. Any African American candidate, or any Latino candidate, or Asian candidate or woman candidate confronts a higher threshold in establishing himself to the voters ... Are some voters not going to vote for me because I'm African American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn't vote for me because of my politics.
Throughout African-American literature, the writer has, in a sense, been burdened by the necessity of pleading the case for the whole race. For example, writers of slave narratives tend to lose their individual voices, as they were expected to stand in for all other voices, which were absent.
I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.
When 'Red Tails' came along, all I knew was that they were the first African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. Air Force. I had no idea how deep the story went or about all their amazing achievements. There were a few Tuskegee Airmen on the set to make sure everything was as authentic as possible.
When I was a kid, I'd go to the African-American section in the bookstore, and I'd try and find African-American people I hadn't read before. So in that sense the category was useful to me. But it's not useful to me as I write. I don't sit down to write an African-American zombie story or an African-American story about elevators. I'm writing a story about elevators which happens to talk about race in different ways. Or I'm writing a zombie novel which doesn't have that much to do with being black in America. That novel is really about survival.
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away.
There is a part of me that's oblivious. People always ask me, 'What obstacles have you faced?' and I always think, 'What are you talking about?' Whether or not there were obstacles, I never saw obstacles. It's never occurred to me that I wasn't good enough for something.
My dad empowered me and made me believe I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to.
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