Black and white is so familiar. It's how we see the printed word in books, so it's kind of neutral in a way. Yet it's ironic that black and white is so charged socially, what with its association with race.
The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males.
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."
Finding the first seed black holes could help reveal how the relation between black holes and their host galaxies evolved over time.
It would be much easier to just make black, brown and beige clothes. But I do not see the world in black and white and beige. I find colors incredibly important.
You can manicure a cat but can you caticure a man?
One of the things I noticed when I worked at Vibe was that backstage at a fashion show, they always referred to the black models as "black girls." I thought, "They never say 'white girls.'
The black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so.
I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic make-up, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.
My training in martial arts was kind of a crash course in how to look like a black belt. I know the moves of a black belt - my kicks, and my stretches, and my punches and all that.
I draw rainbows whenever I see them, with my black ink pen. When I have collected enough, I thought I might make a book called Black-and-White Rainbows.
She comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her -- guess what -- she's off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life.
The history of black women in the economy is rooted in the legacy of slavery. Enslaved black women were forced to provide care work, unpaid, for white families.
There's this idea that many of the attitudes and personality developments in black folks in the diaspora are a consequence of this unresolved trauma. There have been attempts by black artists to try and figure out how to represent that in some kind of way.
I think we're used to the black filmmaker coming in and making the all-black subject matter. Especially at Sundance, they're looking for that. It's funny because amongst my filmmaker friends talk about this.
I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.
A lot of the things you see in science fiction revolve around black holes because black holes are strong enough to rip the fabric of space and time.
There's always opposition when you speak on topics like I'm speaking on. But I'm a black man in America. I grew up black in America. You can't tell me that what I've experienced and what I've seen is not true.
Fortunately, the leadership of black immigrant communities has always been present in all black liberation movements from leaders like Marcus Garvey to Shirley Chisholm to Malcolm X and Harry Belafonte. We know this is our legacy.
For Bobby and I to sing R&B and sound black was probably the stupidest thing we could do. White radio stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were black. Black stations wouldn't play us because they thought we were white. Any time you break ground, you go against the grain.
In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.
When you go to a club it's not about being black or white or heavy or thick. I'm shaking my ass because I want to shake my ass, not 'cause "I'm dancing like a black girl!"
As far as stand-ups go, I always loved Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and Sinbad. Basically, I love black comedians because they're the funniest. I wish I were a black comedian, actually.
The cat with gloves catches no mice.
I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.
I'm just an outgoing cool cat.
Our situation is more psychological than people will admit.
Black kids kill Black kids for the same reason cops do.
They see no value.
I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.
A black or royal blue velvet blazer will look great with a pair of jeans and a black or navy turtleneck sweater - though it's a more casual look.
It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'
To describe something as being black and white means it is clearly defined. Yet when your ethnicity is black and white, the dichotomy is not that clear. In fact, it creates a grey area.
We as men, in particular black men, are constantly supported, nurtured, forgiven, apologized for, led, followed and coddled by black women, and they get very little in return.
Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain’t gonna be at the perfect time. You’re married, they’re single. That’s right. You’re Jewish, they’re Palestinian. You’re a Mexican, they’re a raccoon. You’re a black woman, he’s a black man.
Hollywood, it seems, recognizes black film and black filmmakers, but like a distant lover, never close enough or long enough to forge a meaningful relationship.
Eyes as black and as shiny as chips of obsidian stared back into his. They were eyes like black holes, letting nothing out, not even information.
I was very much a part of the civil rights era, so, of course, my fantasy was to marry some outstanding black gentleman, a leader - someone like Martin Luther King who was doing something for black people.
The ingrained image of black men being searched by the police feeds into the collective illusion that black men everywhere need to be policed more than others.
Representing young black girls and giving them hope and the light and letting them know that they can do anything is important to me as a little black girl, too.
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.
As to the black dwarfs, they wouldn't allow anyone to look into them, because what is inside them is truly horrible. That is why they want everything on Earth to be as black and dark as they are themselves.
There's this idea if you are a woman of colour, that you must never let them see you break down. That we've got to show ourselves in the best light, always, as the 'Strong Black Women' and bring that 'black girl magic' all the time.
Malcolm X never renounced and never stepped away from a strong commitment to black nationalism and black self-determination. That's absolutely clear if you do any analysis of his speeches.
Unfortunately, I have been a little disappointed that we have issues out there like traditional marriage, abortion, school education, and we have so much silence from the black community, from black preachers, because they understand first hand the impact of all that.
I am the cat that walks alone.
Who knows what goes on in the mind of a cat?
I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black, and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.
Black Trans Lives Matter, to me, is really different. I think it speaks most directly to the marginalization and disenfranchisement of trans people within the black community.
I hope we get pulled over, he says. I'd like to see how the cop responds to a black man wearing a Confederate T-shirt over a black dress.
I especially appreciated hearing the President [Barack Obama] affirm that "black lives matter" and that it means that some citizens are feeling more pain, and experiencing more negative effects than others, and he offered up the stats. He also indicated that black lives matter does not negate the fact that blue lives matter. He ably walked the tightrope, here, between affirming both black life and police life.
My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world. Some of the greatest inspirations in my life have been black Americans. And I just wanted to say thank you. They've been a huge inspiration, to myself and this country.
Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society.
Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?
The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.'
I'm working to create a space where it feels easy to include and imagine black girls and make black girls like me the main characters of our lives.
...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men.
The cat in gloves catches no mice.
Increasingly independent black economic, cultural and political power gave Blacks more freedom to do what came natural to them. Divorced from White influence and culture, they reverted quickly to their genotype - increasingly typical of black societies around the world. Males exhibited exaggerated sexual aggression and promiscuity that led to the dissolution of the Black nuclear family in America. Females reverted to the age-old African model of maternal provisioning of children.
It is extremely interesting to me that black males, and other black folk, are viewed as self-pitying, by either other blacks who have failed to accurately calculate their own diminished status as a result of racial animosity - both individual and systemic - or by whites who fail to comprehend how, after forcing black folk into subservience for hundreds of years, they now whine about small privileges that pale - so to speak - in comparison to the untold advantage of centuries of benefit.
We must stand up and say, "I'm black and I'm beautiful," and this self-affirmation is the black man's need, made compelling by the white man's crimes against him.
My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor.
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