A Quote by John Barnes
What I say about myself, black footballers or black pop stars is that we have been 'elevated out of blackness.' Because when people see us, they don't see us as being black. These are the issues that we should address.
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I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.
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.
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 woman. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.
I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us, made it very clear what we were.
Being black has been put in such a negative light. For such a long time, being black has been criminalized, but being black is something that I should be proud of because we have so many black people who have accomplished so many amazing things in the world.
Blackness has always been stigmatised, even amongst black people who flee from the density of that blackness. Some black people recoil from black people who are that dark because it has always been stigmatised.
The easy answer is to say that it's a part for black people to see black heroes, but to me it's important to young Mexican kids to see a black hero.
I'm not talking about my children's father'he's a wonderful black man, the hero of my life, and he's never disrespected or betrayed me. But I'm talking about what I see in the streets and in the media, this naked hatred that black men have towards the authentic black woman'which is really an indication of black men's hatred for blackness itself.
It's very necessary, showing the positive aspect of a black father. We see a lot of black women being the head of the household and holding the house down, but I think we need to have those images because there are black fathers out there who are doing the same thing and who are the glue to the family. That's who Black Lightning is.
I never thought about being the first black actor to win, even though everybody else talked about that. If I stop to think as a black actor, people will see me differently. If I play as a black actor, people will only see that. I think my key was to perform as an actor, not as a black actor. And after winning the Cesar, I was an actor with a Cesar. there are many more adjectives to describe who I am. I'm not only black.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness and your black presence.
Being a black artist, the first thing people want to talk about is your blackness, the importance of your blackness, and your black presence.
I'm an African woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than they do black American people, because it's like watching my own children trapped in a car that's sinking to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save them'the black Americans have their own holocaust going on. You see the black man erasing black children from the landscape, you see black women desperately trying to get the black man's attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children across the ocean.
The way we have been programmed and conditioned to think about the black kid being an athlete, it's like every young black boy people would see say 'what sport do you play?' instead of just asking 'what do you do?' 'What are you interested in?'
Even people who say that black people are minorities, there are a billion black people in the world. A billion white people. What part of that is a minority? If you separate yourself, then maybe. But I see black people as one man. When I see people beaten on the streets of America, that hurts me. I feel that.
People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.
