A Quote by John Barnes
For a long time, images of black men with big lips and a round head were used to make us feel inferior, but it doesn't need to be like that, we don't need to self'loathe. We can change the narrative.
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Hollywood is so fixated on keeping it that way because it's generating the buzz, but that representation isn't right. I definitely feel like it's getting better - it's not only for blacks, but for people that are of all different skin colors. It is very important that black independent films get seen. We need to start getting used to black people. They exist. And they've been around for a long time. It's amazing that people still feel, "Oh my gosh, it's a black guy."
I want - no, I need - to see images of black girls and femmes twerking, slaying and primping, just as much as I need to see Symone Sanders bopping her head and Representative Maxine Waters reclaiming her time.
When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time.
It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.
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.
We become male automatically because of the Y chromosome and the little magic peanut, but if we are to become men we need the helpof other men--we need our fathers to model for us and then to anoint us, we need our buddies to share the coming-of-age rituals with us and to let us join the team of men, and we need myths of heroes to inspire us and to show us the way.
Some of you may feel that you are not as attractive and beautiful and glamorous as you would like to be. Rise above any such feelings, cultivate the light you have within you, and it will shine through as a radiant expression that will be seen by others. You need never feel inferior. You need never feel that you were born without talents or without opportunities to give them expression. Cultivate whatever talents you have, and they will grow an? refine and become an expression of your true self appreciated by others.
Men are amazing. I love the way they are. They're consistently little boys, and they need to be nurtured and loved. But at the same time, they need to feel like men.
I felt it was necessary. I never ever paid attention to any election. Not really [into] politics or anything like that. It never benefited us. This time around, it's not a black-or-white thing — you got somebody in there for us that's well-spoken and gonna handle their business. I just wanted to do my part and let them know we need change, we need help, it's rough out there.
We’re face to face with images all the time in a way that we never have been before... Young people need to understand that not all images are there to be consumed like fast food and then forgotten – we need to educate them to understand the difference between moving images that engage their humanity and their intelligence, and moving images that are just selling them something.
There were no black images of dignity, no images of beautiful black people. There was this big hole. I tried to fill it.
I'm always thinking about what a black lady would think about what I'm doing, just because I feel like they have such great taste, mostly because as black women, we've spent a lot of time downloading what a white male narrative is, so in my head, I'm like, 'If a black woman likes it, if she responds to it, then it's probably pretty damn great.'
When I was 10 or 11, my grandmother had a scarf. It was black, but a long one. I used to wrap it around my head and say to them that 'I'm a cleric, you need to pray behind me.'
You need to take the traumas and make them part of who you've come to be, and you need to fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt.
Sadly, black people disassociate ourselves from the things which make us who we are, identifying them as lesser, or inferior. It's a form of self hate. So, with reckless abandon, we strive to be like the majority.
I felt inferior. I had this tremendous need to perform. I wanted to be acceptable to my peers. I thought if I could just be a big star, I'd feel like somebody, too.
