Top 1200 Black Person Quotes & Sayings

I don't trust white critics' judgment about most things that deal with black life, particularly when a black person is the creator.

In the 1970s in black and Asian households up and down the country, there's a familiar story that when we saw a non-white person on TV we would call the rest of the family to the sitting room to have a look. The story that is less well known is what it was like to be that one black person on TV.

As much as I'm a black person from America, I'm a black person from Africa, too.

One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person.

I'm not an urban black person. I'm a country black person.

As a black person, I'm used to going to places in which I might be the only black person that shows up there. This experience has an effect on the way you see yourself in the world and what it means to be black in the world.

I think that's what's so great about 'Jessica James' is you get to sit back and take a moment and realize that this person is black. And some days, this character wakes up and feels black, and some days, she doesn't. That is, for me, a fully black experience.

When a black person kills a black person, the media ignores it completely.

I have a perhaps naive point of view informed by my own kind of snowflake-in-the-unique-sense rather than the political sense, personal story. I mean I feel like my experiences are so hard to map onto any kind of generalized identity. For example, I'm a black person, but I come from a very particular black experience which is not unlike the experience of the Barack Obama. I have an African mother and a white father and I feel like I have a different experience of being a black person as a result of that identity than someone who is from the descendants of slaves.

Well who's black and what is a black person?

The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman.

As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.

I have spent my whole life earnestly believing the fundamental American dictum that a single 'drop of black blood' makes a person 'black' primarily because they can never be 'white.'

They say that every Jewish person is supposed to love one black person in his life. I'm glad Lorne Michaels chose me.

I never had a black teacher or lecturer, I never once met a black British person who held any sort of professional or managerial role.

I remember when I had my show [The Chris Rock Show on HBO], I used to run my show. It was so hard to get people to bring sketches to me. No one had ever worked for a black person before. Even the black people hadn't worked for a black person. It literally took a month or two for everybody to know: I'm really running the show.

There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.

No black person married to a white person can speak for me!

'Black Panther' had a whole cast of beautiful black brilliance. Black scientists. Black presidents. The style. The technology. The color.

Certainly I feel like I'm the tip of the arrow at times because certainly the national media wants to talk about the fact that I'm a black Republican and some people think of that as zany that a black person would be a conservative but to me what is zany is any person black, white, red, brown or yellow not being a conservative.

An actor hears 'no' more often than the average person. A black human and a black woman on top of that? That's a lot of no's.

In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling.

For a black person who's Senegalese, growing up in France, or a New York Jamaican, that's a completely different relationship with being black and how you might be accepted in that culture or that world. Everyone's experience is different. Especially black women and black men.

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

When I was a teenager, black pride became newly popular again. Suddenly a lot of black people were wearing the fake kente cloth and red black and green and Bob Marley. That was sort of my window into finding my own identity as a black person.

Black Realism or cosmopolitan black politician is a code word to say this is a black person that is not tied to a civil rights/black power traditional black politics.

A black Christian is like a black person with no memory.

I've been in situations where I was 'black boy white,' or 'white boy black.' People didn't know, "Is he the whitest black person in the world or is he the blackest white person in the world?"

If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice.

Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was the first person in rock I had seen with makeup on. He wore black nail polish and lots of mascara and black eye shadow, and he was so mysterious. It was this androgynous thing I found absolutely fascinating.

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

Among liberals and Democrats, there is this notion that the poor - especially the black poor - can do no wrong. If you criticize any poor and black person who displays inappropriate, boorish or egregiously bad conduct, you'll be dismissed as a racist if you're not black. And as an Uncle Tom or sellout if you are.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, 'Look how far we've come,' because we hadn't come very far, to say the least. Although Jackson's population was half white and half black, I didn't have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress.

I'm a black person and when I was growing up I went to a school with no other black people and walked past signs that said 'Keep Britain White.'

I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a 'brother.'

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.

If you're a black person in America, it's really hard to avoid being black. And what I mean is that the reality of your cultural history, regardless of whether or not you talk about it, it's there.

Gee, I wish that life were so black and white that you can't think of a single person who, you know, a good person who has done bad things.

Any time a black person has the audacity to tell everybody else that they're also human beings, they are confronted with all kinds of malice and violence and ill will. It's been that way since black people were brought to this country.

Black was bestlooking. ... Ebony was the best wood, the hardest wood; it was black. Virginia ham was the best ham. It was black on the outside. Tuxedos and tail coats were black and they were a man's finest, most expensive clothes. You had to use pepper to make most meats and vegetables fit to eat. The most flavorsome pepper was black. The best caviar was black. The rarest jewels were black: black opals, black pearls.

Sometimes, you feel like, 'Am I going to be upset about this as a black person or as a woman first? Or am I gonna be both?' Because some things inherently affect black women; some things affect you as a woman and not a black person; and some things just affect you as a black person.

When someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

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 vast majority of murdered whites are murdered by other whites. That's why there's no national outrage when a white person is killed by a black person: it's not evidence of some underlying black violence problem directed against white people.

I think, as a white person, I do not want to speak for a black person.

I, however, like black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience. In the darkest darkness, all is black. In the deepest hole, all is black. In the terror of my Addicted mind, all is black. In the empty periods of my lost memory, all is black. I like black, goddammit, and I am going to give it its due.

I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.

I was brought up in black neighborhoods in South Baltimore. And we really felt like we were very black. We acted black and we spoke black. When I was a kid growing up, where I came from, it was hip to be black. To be white was kind of square.

When I was in Mecca I noticed that their, they had no color problem. That they had people there whose eyes were blue and people there whose eyes were black, people whose skin was white, people whose skin was black, people whose hair was blond, people whose hair was black, from the whitest white person to the blackest black person.

I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person.

I think if you are a black person or an Hispanic person, you are not as fond of Rudolph Giuliani as you are if you happen to be a white person. Because he has trampled on people's civil rights.

There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.

White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, 'We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here - have a nice day!'

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

For some reason, we're brainwashed to think if you're not a thug or an idiot, you're not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don't break the law, you're not a good black person.

Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black.

Black, white, yellow, brown - we wanted somebody who would do right by us. And I think because Obama was that person, whether he was black or white, he was chosen