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Being Black Quotes

Browse 22 quotes about Being Black.

Being Black Quotes

“While in college I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, described as being black, tell me I am not black enough. Some people whom the society calls white tell me the same thing. I have heard this mainly about my novels, from editors who have rejected me and reviewers whom I have apparently confused and, on a couple of occasions, on a basketball court when upon missing a shot I muttered Egads.”

IdentityAfrican AmericansBlacksBlacknessBeing Black
Book:Erasure
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“And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason. A dim notion of what life meant to a Negro in America was coming to consciousness in me, not in terms of external events, lynchings, Jim Crowism, and the endless brutalities, but in terms of crossed-up feeling, of psyche pain. I sensed that Negro life was a sprawling land of unconscious suffering, and there were but few Negroes who knew the meaning of their lives, who could tell their story.”

RaceBlack Lives MatterRace And Racism In AmericaBlmBeing Black
Book:Black Boy
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“Less dead" homicide victims, a term credited to criminologist Steven Egger, have historically been not as thoroughly investigated as their wealthier, whiter, and perhaps more sober counterparts. Pretty white college students are the most dead. Black transgender hookers with addiction issues are the least dead.”

RelationshipsJusticeCrimeMen And WomenPoliceInjusticeTrue CrimeBeing Black
Book:Behold the Monster: Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer
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“You just looks so young!" ....I barely belong here at these school events, single and Black, so every time I hear this, it's like they're confirming that, too. It makes me want to roll out my whole resume to justify my place, Like, I have a master's degree from UCLA, lady! I was eight month's pregnant with Pearl at the ceremony, but still! I'm grown, just like you! I use Sensodyne, and I have enough white hairs that I can't keep casually plucking them without looking like a "before" in one of those women's hair loss Instagram ads I keep getting, and I am pretty sure my back hurts more than it doesn't hurt now....”

LoveHumorHateRelationshipsFateMen And WomenParents And ChildrenBeing Black
Book:It's Elementary
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“What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children.”

AdoptionBeing BlackTransracial Adoption
Book:In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption
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“[Phone interview transcript between author Roorda & Vershawn A. Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, a book based on his Ph.D dissertation] Now the subtitle, Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, what does that cover? It covers the range of enactments in speech, in dress, in the way we behave, the way that we interact with other people. Basically, it is the range of enactments that black people have to go through to be successful in America. I call it the burden of racial performance that black people are required, not only by whites but by other blacks as well, to prove through their behaviors, their speech, and their actions the kind of black person that they are. Really, there are only two kinds you can be. In the words of comedian Chris Rock, you can either be a black person, which is a respectable, bourgeois, middle-class black person, or you can be a nigger. As Chris Rock says in his show, "I love black people, but I hate niggers." So . . . when a black person walks into a room, always in the other person's mind is the question "What kind of black person is this in front of me?" They are looking for clues in your speech, in your demeanor, in your behavior, and in everything that you do -- it is like they are hyperattentive to your ways of being in order to say, "Okay, this is a real black person. I can trust them. I'll let them work here. Or, nope: this is a nigger, look at the spelling of their name: Shaniqua or Daquandre." We get discriminated against based on our actions. So that is what the subtitle was trying to suggest in performing race. And in performing literacy, just what is the prescribed means for increasing our class status? A mind-set: "Okay, black people, you guys have no excuse. You can go to school and get an education like everybody else." I wanted to pay attention to the ways in which school perpetuated a structural racism through literacy, the way in which it sort of stigmatizes and oppresses blackness in a space where it claims it is opening up opportunities for black people.”

AdoptionSystemic RacismBeing BlackTransracial Adoption
Book:In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption
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