A Quote by Ruby Bridges
Once my school was integrated, and I was there with white kids and a few black kids, it really didn't matter to us what we looked like.
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When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school.
The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.
I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and that's everybody's wish... I try to be a role model for black kids, white kids, yellow kids, green kids. This is what I felt was good about my personality.
In college, I didn't know whether to hang out with the black kids or the white kids, and then I found the theatre kids, and I was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matter.' We were all weird and listening to Morrissey and wearing Doc Martens so that was my tribe.
I have black friends, but I don't just hang out with black kids. I might pull up with Indian kids, white kids, black kids, whatever.
We separated like oil and water. In the cafeteria, you'd see a table of black jocks, table of white jocks, table of rich white kids, table of Hispanic kids, table of Chinese kids, table of druggies, table of chatterboxes, and so on. Wait! There's a diverse table over there! With a few kids of different tenacities and economic status! Oh, that's the nerds. That's where I sat. We weren't cool enough for the other tables, so we didn't discriminate against anybody.
I was one of the first six black kids to integrate a formerly all-white school. I remember being looked at all the time and people laughing at my hair. I was also very self-conscious about the food I had for lunch. I had egg sandwiches, and the other mothers gave kids fancy stuff like bologna and Marmite. It took about a year to settle in.
I hated, when I was a kid, being told that 'Black people don't do that.' And the white kids at school didn't accept me because I was black, and the black kids in my neighborhood didn't accept me because they thought I thought I was white.
All my playmates were black. I lived in a little community called Archery (ph) in a rural area. And I didn't have any white neighbors at all. So all my kids with whom I fought and wrestled and went fishing and worked in the field and so forth were African-Americans. And that was my life. So when I got to be school age, we had to separate during the daytime, but I always felt like I was in an alien environment when I was in Plains, Georgia with white kids. I was eager to get back where I belonged with my black playmates.
I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids.
I love everything black, because black is cool. When something crosses over, people are like, "Oh, this is a crossover." First of all, there is no urban anymore. Pop culture is black. White kids are dressing like black kids. It's all crossed the lines now. The way I understand it is, everything black is cool. When it crosses over to white, that means it's going from cool to uncool. That's what crossover is.
Kids that I went to school with didn't know how to interact with black people like that. There were only, like, three or four black kids in the class.
I don't see anything wrong with a neighborhood association wanting to keep their neighborhood a certain way or their apartment complex a certain way. I don't see anything wrong with white kids wanting to go to school with white children, or black kids wanting to go to school with black kids.
I went to a public high school and most of the comedy was coming from the black kids and the Asian kids and the Hispanic kids. And, the coolest kids to me where always the black kids. They were always fashion forward and they always dressed the coolest. They were always the best dancers, and just the coolest people.
I did Are We There Yet? because I wanted to do a movie for my fans' kids. Black kids don't really see movies on this budget for them, starring them. And there's so many white kids that love that movie.
I did 'Are We There Yet?' because I wanted to do a movie for my fans' kids. Black kids don't really see movies on this budget for them, starring them. And there's so many white kids that love that movie.
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