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Blackness Quotes

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Blackness Quotes

“Or… maybe I’m not going crazy. “Maybe I’m some sort of android-cyborg-clone-thing, and I’m just breaking down. I’m not sure which way is worse. Dad laughs. “You’re not in your right mind, dear,” he says. “No, no, no, you’re not.” And then— —Silence. Dad fades away. The reverie chair disappears. There’s just blackness. I remember then that I am in the reverie of something dead. Whatever that thing was, it was dead. And, just as I’m starting to wonder if, perhaps, I have died, too, I see a light, far away in the corner of the dreamscape. The light isn’t soft; it’s not glowing. It crackles like silent lightning, burning with electricity, sparks flying out and fizzling in the dark. I don’t know why—it makes no sense, the way dreams often don’t—but I want to touch the light. So I do.”

MindLightSilenceCrazyDeadBreaking DownBlacknessReverieAndroidDreamscape
Book:The Body Electric
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“...в самой глубине души у Корнелия жило опасливое понимание, что эта бодрость, этот счастливый настрой могут оказаться недолгими. И опять придёт уныние, неуверенность. Страх...”

FearUncertaintyBlackness
Book:Выстрел с монитора. Гуси-гуси, га-га-га...
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“A few weeks into our stay, I made a friend who wanted to improve his English as much as I wanted to improve my French. We met one day out in the crowd in front of Notre Dame. We walked to the Latin Quarter. We walked to a wine shop. Outside the wine shop there was seating. We sat and drank a bottle of red. We were served heaping piles of meats, bread, and cheese. Was this dinner? Did people do this? I had not even known how to imagine it. And more, was this all some elaborate ritual to get an angle on me? My friend paid. I thanked him. But when we left I made sure he walked out first. He wanted to show me one of those old buildings that seem to be around every corner in that city. And the entire time he was leading me, I was sure he was going to make a quick turn into an alley, where some dudes would be waiting to strip me of…what, exactly? But my new friend simply showed me the building, shook my hand, gave a fine bon soirée, and walked off into the wide open night. And watching him walk away, I felt that I had missed part of the experience because of my eyes, because my eyes were made in Baltimore, because my eyes were blindfolded by fear.”

FearAuthenticityHumanity And SocietyBlackness
Book:Between the World and Me
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“You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time." "Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?" "No..." I wedged in. "That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?" "No. Ceri -" I took a step forward. "My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.”

SoulHellRedemptionBlacknessDamnationBlack MagicDemon Magic
Book:A Fistful of Charms
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“There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.' [From an undated, handwritten piece of text from the early 1950s which Sagan wrote when he was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago]”

LightScienceUniverseStarsSpaceSilentDepthTerrorAstronomyEndlessGreatImmortalInfinityFrighteningNothingBlacknessPascalEnormityBlaise Pascal
Author:Carl Sagan
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“To my Black brothers and sisters, choose faith. As difficult as it is, choose faith—the kind of faith that we know without works is dead. The faith that raises awareness, educates the community, advocates, cares for the widows and feeds the orphans. Choose the faith that is compelled to action, but not controlled my anger.”

JusticeSinRacismCivil RightsMinoritiesBigotryBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryBlacknessChristians And Civil RightsBible And Civil RightsChristian Advocacy
Author:Andrena Sawyer
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“Empowerment looks like cultivating the wisdom to make the best choices we can out of what are customarily a piss-poor set of options. Power looks like the ability to create better options. The powerlessness and capriciousness of being repeatedly jammed up at the personal and political crossroads of one's intersection while a watching world pretends not to see you there, needing help, is how it feels to be a Black woman on an ordinary day.”

PowerEmpowermentBlack WomenBlacknessBlack Women QuotesBlack Girl Magic
Book:Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
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“To P.J. (2 yrs old who sed write a poem for me in Portland, Oregon) if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u little 2/yr/old/brotha, I wud laugh, jump, leap up and touch the stars cuz u be the poem i try for each time i pick up a pen and paper. u. and Morani and Mungu be our blue/blk/stars that will shine on our lives and makes us finally BE. if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u, little 2/yr/old/brotha, poetry wud go out of bizness.”

LoveChildrenPoetryAfrican AmericansBlacknessBlack Is Beautiful
Book:It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs
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“This entire experience, although seemingly harmless in the grand cosmic scheme of life, was a perfect microcosm of the American dream. The good minority earned his rank by beating up the bad minority--a tale as old as the founding of this country. You try to gain as much proximity to whiteness and as much distance as you can from Blackness or the villain of the day, in order to become accepted by the mainstream.”

RacismMinoritiesImmigrantsBullyingAmerican DreamBlacknessWhitenessFitting In
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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“I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell. There's Heaven then there's Hell niggas One day your cruisin' in your seven, Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies, Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' up Hit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicle Everything was all good just a week ago 'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you? Ready to start snitchin' ain't you? I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't you Aside from the fast cars Honeys that shake they ass in bars You know you wouldn't be involved With the Underworld dealers, carriers of mac-millers East coast bodiers, West coast cap-peelers Little monkey niggas turned gorillas.”

CrimeNarcissismBlack HistoryGhettoBlacknessCrime And PunishmentYouth CultureHustlingThe American DreamFreakonomicsStreet Culture
Book:Decoded
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“Most people write me off when they see me. They do not know my story. They say I am just an African. They judge me before they get to know me. What they do not know is The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins; The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people; The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community; The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance; The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it. Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning. So you think I am nothing? Don’t worry about what I am now, For what I will be, I am gradually becoming. I will raise my head high wherever I go Because of my African pride, And nobody will take that away from me.”

African AmericanAfricaBlack WomenAfrican AmericansBlack Lives MatterBlack HistoryBlacknessAfrica QuotesAfrican American AuthorsAfricanAfrican AuthorsBlack History MonthAfrican QuotesBlack AmericaBlack GirlAfrican LiteratureNelson MandelaAfrican CultureBlack Girls RockAfrican WomenAfricansAfrican ContinentBlack QueenBlack WomanAfrican LeadersBlack Is BeautifulAfrican ProverbAfrican UnionBlack In AmericaBlack AmericansAfrican FictionAfrican PeopleAfrican LanguagesAfrican SayingAfrican WriterKwame NkrumahAfrican National CongressBlack LiteratureAfrica PeopleAfrican CitizensAfrican DevelopmentAfrican DictatorsAfrican Great LakesAfrican WomanDesmond TutuKofi AnnanAfrica LeadersAfrica Will ShakeAfrican BelievesAfrican DescentAfrican FreethinkerAfrican My MotherlandAfrican SocialismBlack Book AuthorBlack IntellectualsAfrica HouseAfrica S PredicamentAfrica S WealthAfrican CulturalAfrican Cup Of NationsAfrican Development BankAfrican Great HealerAfrican HealerAfrican JujuAfrican SafariAfrican Story TellingAfrican Traditional HealerAfricanaAfricana StudiesChina AchebeAfrica HerbalistAfrican VoodooBlack Literary Classics
Book:Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams
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“If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the "Negro" has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death.”

RaceRacismWhite SupremacyMarxismBlacknessAnti BlacknessSocial DeathOrlando Patterson
Author:Frank B. Wilderson III
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“Racism has permeated psychology and psychiatry from its genesis. Early clinicians came from white, European backgrounds, and used their culture's social norms as the basis for what being healthy looked like. It was a very narrow and oppressive definition, which assumed that being genteel, well-dressed, well-read, and white were the marks of humanity, and that anyone who deviated from that standard was not a person, but an animal in need of being tamed.”

RacismPrejudiceOppressionBiasAutismPsychiatryBlacknessWhitenessNeurodiversity
Book:Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
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“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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“Many black intellectuals spoke about the experience of racism mainly, and sometimes exclusively, from a black male perspective, highlighting the various ways their humanity had been degraded and denied. While this discussion was something I cared about deeply, it was rarely balanced with one about all the unique ways in which black women have suffered. Even the scholars who spoke about race without focusing so much on the particular experience of black men still failed to fully capture and dissect the compounded challenges black women faced as they dealt with racism and sexism. The result of discussions of race being unfairly tilted toward the male point of view is that the experiences of black women have taken a backseat to those of black men, although they've suffered in ways that black men haven't. Racism and sexism were stacked against them. And too often they've borne the brunt of the very masculinity that has been historically debased in black men when black men asserted their power over the only people they could - black women...The hard truth is that black men have contributed to these struggles both subtly and overtly...we contribute to the degradation of black women by glorifying the kind of common rap that reduces them to bitches, hoes, and body parts.”

SexismBlack WomenBlacknessIntersectionalityBipocIntersectional FeminismBlack Experience
Book:Uncensored
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“That morning, like every morning, the first decision he made regarded his Blackness. His skin was a deep, constant brown. In public, when people could actually see him, it was impossible to get his Blackness down to anywhere near a 1.5. If he wore a tie, wing-tipped shoes, smiled constantly, used his indoor voice, and kept his hands strapped and calm at his sides, he could get his Blackness as low as 4.0.”

African AmericansBlacksBlacknessBlack Men
Book:Friday Black
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“I wasn’t allowed to be and stay what I was,” says Paul D. So, what is the being of blackness? Ultimately, (anti)blackness appears to be a matrix: a mold, a womb, a binding substance, a network of intersections, functioning as an encoder or decoder. It is an essential enabling condition for something of, but distinguishable from, its source—and therefore, it performs a kind of natality, performing a generative function rather than serving as an identity. If (anti)blackness is a matrix, then the normative conception of “the human” and the entire set of arrangements Sweet Home allegorizes have their source in abject blackness. In the process of distinguishing itself from blackness, normative humanity nevertheless bears the shadowy traces of blackness’s abject generativity. As “the defined” rather than the “definers,” the enslaved’s abjection places blackness under the sign of the feminine, the object, matter, and the animal regardless of sex.”

Blackness
Book:Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World
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“When I rebelled, even here in the ‘enlightened’ twenty-first century, I was lumbered with with the feeling that I was rebelling on the behalf on an entire people, and when I refrained from rebelling it was to challenge the opinion that I was proof of a black problem; acts of resistance considered fair game when enacted by white people assume a dangerous radical hue in the eyes of Western society when carried out by blacks. In essence, I wasn’t comfortable enough in my own skin in this Antifa stuff, partly because I felt the colour of that skin carried its own surplus surreality in the surroundings i grew up in; I could be wearing an Oxford shirt and chinos and driving a Toyota Prius, and still be enough of an outsider.”

ResistanceBlacknessAfropean
Author:Johny Pitts
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“Dear Black Man (Poem) ***** I love you because you make me feel things that I have never felt before. You erase my pain and you bring me so much gain. You embrace me and hide me in your well built African and manly body. You make me want to never look at other bodies. I love how you cut your hair. I love to feel your love in the air. The texture of your hair, so beautiful, so artistic. Your beautiful smile, so amazing; it reminds me of hiding places. You walk like you own the world; at least, I assure you that you own mine and the rest of my words. Black Man, you are beautiful. Your skin tone is so dark, it makes me want to bark. Please allow me to run my hands on the hills of that skin. You are handsome, my amazing king. The way you speak your language. The way you speak your Xhosa. Your Hausa. Your Zulu. Your Kituba. Your Tswana. Your Lingala. Your Venda. Your Gadomba. Your Tsonga. Your Shona. Your Bateke. Your Ga. Your Sotho. Your Igbo. Your eyes. Black Man, your eyes tell me a story never heard before. You teach me; from your wisdom, I learn. From your strength, I know 'I can'. Black Man, they enslaved you because they found you intimidating. But today, they look for you to be their mate in dating. You look at my stretchmarks with an eye of an artist. You appreciate my big behind with no judgement. You kiss my big lips with love. And in my big thighs, you hide. You love me when I have no hair. You love me when I have fake hair. Black Man, I thought of you and I wrote to you. All hail the Black king! From your Black Woman, (with African curves) .”

QuotesWriterBlacknessAfricanPoems By Mitta XinindluRoots And OriginsBlack Men And Black PeopleCelebration Of AfricaHistory Telling
Author:Mitta Xinindlu
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“Blackness doesn’t make you less, but it does frame your life. When you walk into a room, so does race. Frankly, it shows up before you do. It colors every conversation, shapes how you’re viewed, determines whether you’re even heard. From the day you get here, Blackness hangs over everything, from comments about your hair (‘Can I touch it?’) to mentions that certain Black people are ‘smart’ (’cause it’s assumed we’re idiots). The message comes through loud and clear: You’re not one of us, you’re less.”

RaceBlackness
Book:Coming Home
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“And the Creator said: With this Afro hair, I crown you as kings and queens. The natural heirs of the Earth. I crown you so that you never need to place a material crown upon your head as proof of your royalty, one wich loses value with time. Your Afro crown remains valuable through all lifetimes. I set you apart from the rest. I keep you covered in a natural shade. I give you hair that retains water, so you remain cool under the Sun. I crown you with natural antennas, connecting you to the skies above. I give you Afro Hair to set you as trees that never decay. Trees that stand tall, firm, and strong through all seasons. I give you this Afro hair as a mark that you're my chosen people.”

Mitta XinindluBlacknessAfricanKemetBlack SkinAfro HairHeritage And CultureKemetic Lifestyle
Author:Mitta Xinindlu
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“Racist insults leave you feeling dirty because, even at five years old, we already know on some level that, in this society at least, we are indeed lesser citizens with all the baggage of racialised history following us ghost-like about our days. We are conquered people living in the conquerors’ land, and as such we are people without honour. At five years old we are already conscious of the offence caused by our black body turning up in the wrong space, and have begun to internalise the negative ideas about blackness so present in the culture.”

HistoryRacismBlackness
Book:Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire
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“african american women are easy. inferior. africans are dirty. jungle people. african americans are lazy. indolent. african people are too black. ugly. african americans think they are better than us. africans think they are better us. –– listen to the sound of us | we are breaking our mothers heart | the ancestors weep at how much we look like the hate that came to eat us”

RootsSaltBlack WomenRepressionStereotypesBlacknessAncestorsAfricansNayyirah Waheed
Book:Salt
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