Top 100 Be Black Quotes
#1. Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here.
If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.
James Baldwin
#2. I think some people would understand the quintessence of sanctifying grace if they could be black about twenty-four hours.
Amanda Smith
#3. We must begin to understand the nature of intertextuality ... the manner by which texts poems and novels respond to other texts. After all, all cats may be black at night, but not to other cats.
Henry Louis Gates
#4. Everything may be black and white in your world, but in reality there's a hell of a lot of gray.
K.J. McPike
#5. My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.
Rick Riordan
#6. They'll be black because that's the way they're seen. Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, have all known that. Will that change? Don't hold your breath.
Andrew Hacker
#7. Imagine the world as a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw each of us. Adding a shade lighter and darker with each interaction. None would be black or white, either purely absorbing all, or reflecting each. #ColourMeSpotless
Nikhil Sharda
#8. Barack Obama may be black, but John McCain is the first Albino presidential candidate: he's completely see-through!
George Lopez
#9. Even in the days when they did Othello, you didn't necessarily have to be black to play Othello. You wore the makeup.
Jamie Farr
#10. When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs.
Molly Ringwald
#11. I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time, but to do so in order to come out on the other side, to experience a humanity that is neither colorless nor reducible to color.
Henry Louis Gates
#12. The camera implies meaning where no meaning exists. I had not celebrated that brother and sister. I had mocked them. I had exploited their sorrow. I had tried to make them part of a hopeful message on the state of the Union. To be black is to be the actor. To be white is to be the critic.
Don DeLillo
#13. Being gay is harder than being black. I didn't have to come out black. I didn't have to tell my parents about what its like to be black.
Wanda Sykes
#14. You can no more be black like I am black than I could be black like your grandfather was.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#15. I want to be a Half Code. I want to be Black and White, the best of both.
Sally Green
#16. Quite some years ago, I started travelling the planet. I thought this would learn me something about the world we live in. I was wrong ... It learned me something about myself. It changed me. And nothing will ever again be black-and-white again.
Maarten Schafer
#17. Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, Night lie before me and behind me night, And God within far Heaven refuse to light The consolation of the dawn for me,
Between the shadowy burns of Heaven and Hell, It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell With memory.
Madison Cawein
#18. It's only in the deep depth of one's soul you will find the truth of a person. But, be fore warned, what you find may be black, sinister, and more inhuman than you could have ever imagined.
J.C. Brennan
#19. Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.
John Legend
#20. There's more to blackness than bludgeoning people with memories of past atrocities and injustices or the discussion of how difficult it is to be black and deal with whites.
Toure
#21. I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
B.B. King
#22. There's an inherent idea that if a Black executive producer and a Black director are going to do a movie based on a Black writer's book that everybody is going to be Black.
Gabrielle Union
#23. Don't wait up for me tonight, for the night will be black and white.
Gerard De Nerval
#24. I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.
Henry Louis Gates
#25. It's great to be black in Hollywood. When a black actor does something, it seems new and different just by virtue of the fact that he's black.
Will Smith
#26. I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.
Jerry Leiber
#27. No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any color in between and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world
A. Igoni Barrett
#28. Be Black, buy Black, think Black, and all else will take care of itself.
Marcus Garvey
#30. We may be black-hearted men when our turn comes but there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete. Caught-His-Horse-First
Sebastian Barry
#31. Sara saw that privately she could not help hoping very much that they would all be black, and would wear turbans,
Frances Hodgson Burnett
#32. They call me racist too just because I disagree with a president who happens to be black. You are not racists - you are patriots.
Herman Cain
#33. The definition of gumbo is almost as slippery as that of Creole. Just as gumbo can contain pretty much any kind of meat or seafood, Creole is a vague and inclusive term for native New Orleanians, who may be black or white, depending on whom you're asking.
Jay McInerney
#34. My daughter is black and she has to know what it is like to be black. My daughter should know you, Aiken, but she should learn what it means to be black, and you cannot teach her that.
Allan Dare Pearce
#35. The only way I'd ever recruit a white quarterback to play for me is if his mom and daddy would both have to be black, and that's the only way I would do it.
Barry Switzer
#36. Dark means DARK. "They've done studies where they shine a laser on the back of someone's knee, and people pick it up. It's light. You cannot have your phone in your room. You cannot have a TV in your room. It needs to be black, black as night.
Timothy Ferriss
#37. To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
Stephen Carter
#38. If women were in charge of everything, there would be women tyrants. If black people were in charge, there would be black tyrants. If Hispanics were in charge, then Hispanic tyrants.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
#39. I'm really looking forward to developing just really fun, complex, interesting stories about people who happen to be black.
Tracie Thoms
#40. To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.
John Henrik Clarke
#41. All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?
Studs Terkel
#42. Marvel Comics announced that the next Captain America will be black. He has the same powers as white Captain America, except he has to show I.D. when he votes.
Bill Maher
#43. I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
Kara Walker
#44. By the time I'm through with you, I'll be black-tar heroin in your veins and you won't be able to go four hours without me somewhere deep inside you.
Anonymous
#46. There are so many ways to be and to be black at the same time, but we're finally seeing that full range expressed much more widely than before.
Baratunde Thurston
#47. My heart may be black but it was still capable of heart failure.
Abbi Glines
#48. I'm going to be a Republican who happens to be black - who will talk about issues that I'm passionate about.
Tim Scott
#49. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black.
Angie Thomas
#50. People say I'm into black women. Robert De Niro is into black women. I'm just into women who are real, and they happen to be black.
Bill Maher
#51. I may be old, I may be poor, I may be black, but I'm here. I'm here because I've got this vision of justice that compels me to be a witness. I'm here because I'm supposed to be here. I'm here because you can't keep me away.
Bryan Stevenson
#52. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white. But I want tell stories that everybody can relate to, so I don't care who's opposite me.
Shemar Moore
#53. The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James Baldwin
#54. My first web series, 'Dorm Diaries,' was a realistic mockumentary about what it was like to be black at Stanford University. I'm black and I went to Stanford. Boom. Easy.
Issa Rae
#56. If you force me to pick one color, it'd be Black ... It covers up the things inside of me that I don't want to be known. Well, for the same reason, black is the color I hate, too ...
Gosho Aoyama
#57. It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more.
Michael Eric Dyson
#58. I don't see myself as the Great Black Hope. I'm just a golfer who happens to be black and Asian. It doesn't matter whether they're white, black, brown or green.
Tiger Woods
#59. I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.
Shemar Moore
#60. I talked to members of my family, and did some personal research that didn't really have anything to do with the time and place I was writing about, but that gave me a feeling of the experience of being black in a time and place where it was very difficult to be black.
Octavia Butler
#61. Kids are our future, and we hope baseball has given them some idea of what it is to live together and how we can get along, whether you be black or white.
Larry Doby
#62. it was suddenly obvious to me, that in our household, it was more acceptable to be black and morbidly obese, if only for a night, than be a boy in a dress.
Culver Connor McCall
#63. My task is set before me, girl
My mission clear and true
There'll be black knights and dragons, girl
But I will always come for you ...
Emme Rollins
#65. Why is it that if you happen to be black and over six feet tall, everybody thinks you supposed to play basketball or football?
Terry McMillan
#66. It's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person.
Warren Ballentine
#67. One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.
Barbara Smith
#69. I'm a black man that is proud to be black, and I want to help the black community, but I love all mankind.
Common
#70. I probably also wanted to be black at that particular time [ 9 years old] as well.
David Bowie
#71. When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.
Neneh Cherry
#72. Somebody once said to me after I'd done "Deep Impact," "What is it like to play a Black president," and I said, "I didn't play a Black president. I played a president. I just happened to be Black. There's a difference.
Morgan Freeman
#73. If it was so honorable and glorious to be black, why was it the yellow-skinned people among us had so much prestige?
Zora Neale Hurston
#74. Michael Brown happened to be black. Trayvon Martin happened to be black. Eric Garner was a black man. So this pattern continues over and over.
William Lacy Clay Jr.
#75. Oh, the self-importance of fading stars. Never mind, they will be black holes one day.
Jeffrey Bernard
#76. Living here, you don't know anything about white people. Where I'm from, everything is mixed. In Atlanta, at least out here where we stay at, everything is so black that y'all don't know what it feels like to be black.
Tayari Jones
#77. The more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive
Haruki Murakami
#78. In the forties, to get a girl you had to be a GI or a jock. In the fifties, to get a girl you had to be Jewish. In the sixties, to get a girl you had to be black. In the seventies, to get a girl you've got to be a girl.
Mort Sahl
#79. Be black or white with no shades of gray. In other words, don't be a nagging mother.
Clinton Anderson
#80. You've go to have a heart to be in the WWE, but its got to be black. Just like me.
John Layfield
#81. Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.
Billy Porter
#82. Why do you want the world to be black and white? It's not.
Harriet Evans
#83. There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.
Walter Dean Myers
#84. Nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish ... being different from everyone else just made me a lot stronger.
Drake
#85. Monofilament is what you use to go fishing. The line on your fishing rod is probably going to be black. You get to the end of the line and you tie on this clear plastic, thin thread called monofilament.
John Badham
#86. We ought even to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be black, if the superior authorities define it to be so.
Ignatius Of Loyola
#87. I feel as proud to be Jewish as I feel to be black
Sophie Okonedo
#88. As a teenager, my blackness was also questioned by some of the life choices I made that weren't considered to be 'black' choices. For example, joining the swim team when it is a known fact that 'black folk don't swim'; or choosing to become a vegetarian when blacks clearly love chicken.
Issa Rae
#90. It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.
Charlie Pierce
#91. I was involved with the Nation of Islam. I wasn't doing no marching. I've been involved with the Nation for 50 years. Back in those days, they tried to label us as black Muslims. There are Muslims all over the world. It doesn't have to be black; it doesn't matter what color he is.
The Mighty Hannibal
#92. 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.
Jerry Leiber
#93. White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.
John Ridley
#94. It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Charles Dickens
#95. I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.
Denzel Washington
#96. We, at least I, need monsters. Without monsters, there are no heroes. Something has to be black and white.
~Lew Fonesca
Stuart M. Kaminsky
#97. It would seem that some black people want to say that when you, as a black, become successful, you cease to be black. That's ridiculous.
Clarence Thomas
#98. Black is beautiful .Black isn't power. Knowledge is power. You can be black as a crow or white as snow but if you don't know and you ain't got no dough, you can't go and that's for sho'.
Lewis H. Michaux
#99. Mr. Cosby wanted to do a show not about an upper-middle-class black family, but an upper-middle-class family that happened to be black. Though it sounds like semantics, they're very different approaches.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
#100. You can be free. You can be black. Look at me! I'm the Heavyweight Champion! Can't nobody stop me.
Muhammad Ali
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