A Quote by Yance Ford
Everyone in the street where I grew up was given the same message: You can be anything; you can do anything. That wasn't extraordinary; that was ordinary for us. My folks didn't believe in black exceptionalism. There's nothing exceptional about 'You can have that, too' - except when it comes to justice. You can't have that.
Related Quotes
There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.
Reparative justice is not about black people standing on the street corners expecting charities from white folks. This is about building of bridges across lines of moral justice.
I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
Each of us assumes everyone else knows what HE is doing. They all assume we know what WE are doing. We don't...Nothing is going on and nobody knows what it is. Nobody is concealing anything except the fact that he does not understand anything anymore and wishes he could go home.
I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. “Exceptional” refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.
The street is as diverse as any other sector, but in peoples' mind it gets appropriated as a black man who's tough. Trying to make it through by staying hard and phallocentric. To me, that is just an impoverished conception of what it is to be a black male. It doesn't do justice to my grandfather, my father, my brother - or just the black men I grew up with.
I was born in Owerri and grew up in the east of Nigeria, in Imo state. You could say I was a 'street boy': we grew up on the street, played on the street, did everything out on the street. It was a difficult life altogether, but that's how we grew up.
America hasn't been leading anything. We have been blamed the last eight years [2008-2016]. The United States has been nothing special about us. American exceptionalism was mocked and laughed at.
My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.
There are these two strands, the Dionysian and the Appollonian, and in the same theater grew up from these folks who during the day were just ordinary citizens, and at night they would sneak off to the woods and party.
I grew up in a family where you were allowed to say anything; you were allowed to show weakness... I have no problems talking about anything, basically. But at the same time, I know I'm different than a woman.
We have a personal chef who helps us stay on track, and we really like to keep things the same all year round. We don't want to change anything up too much if it's working. We eat clean and organic as much as we can, and try not to eat too much of anything.
I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.
I don't take anything for granted. I've been given extraordinary opportunities, I've also fought for extraordinary opportunities. So I don't believe you're ever just there in this golden moment. You probably always have to remind people that you're there, that you have something to offer, maybe something beyond what they could imagine for you.
If you're black, you can't just be ordinary. All successful black people are extraordinary. If you are tremendously successful, and you're black, you are extraordinary, or you wouldn't stand out in this world.
Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed. Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep. No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way. They all end the same, too.
Related Authors
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes
Mexican
Director
Ava DuVernay Quotes
American
Director
David Lynch Quotes
American
Director
George Lucas Quotes
American
Director
Guillermo del Toro Quotes
Mexican
Director
John Waters Quotes
American
Director
Judd Apatow Quotes
American
Director
Martin Scorsese Quotes
American
Director
Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes
Danish
Director
Oliver Stone Quotes
American
Director
Peter Jackson Quotes
New Zealander
Director
Quentin Tarantino Quotes
American
Director
Ridley Scott Quotes
British
Director
Steven Spielberg Quotes
American
Director
Werner Herzog Quotes
German
Director
Woody Allen Quotes
American
Director