Top 100 To Be Black Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#10. 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
#11. I probably also wanted to be black at that particular time [ 9 years old] as well.
David Bowie
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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.
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. You've go to have a heart to be in the WWE, but its got to be black. Just like me.
John Layfield
#20. Why do you want the world to be black and white? It's not.
Harriet Evans
#21. 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
#22. Nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish ... being different from everyone else just made me a lot stronger.
Drake
#23. 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
#24. I feel as proud to be Jewish as I feel to be black
Sophie Okonedo
#25. 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
#26. Certainly as a kid, I grew up with Batman, Superman, whoever - they didn't need to be black for me to relate to them. But when a character like Cyborg came along, I got excited, because he looked a little bit more like me; his experiences were a little bit more like mine.
John Ridley
#27. To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.
James A. Baldwin
#28. To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.
Barack Obama
#29. My story has more than a "great white hope" plot. I loved and respected Tom because he was a servant of God who happened to be white, just as I feel I am a servant of God who happens to be black and from Africa.
Francis Mandewah
#30. It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#31. Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.
Thomas Sowell
#32. I am more of a conservationist, myself. And people have come to me and said, "Wow, you're an African-American conservationist!" And my response is, "No, I'm a conservationist who happens to be black."
Jerome Ringo
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. We, at least I, need monsters. Without monsters, there are no heroes. Something has to be black and white.
~Lew Fonesca
Stuart M. Kaminsky
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.
Charlie Pierce
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James Baldwin
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black.
Angie Thomas
#49. I'm going to be a Republican who happens to be black - who will talk about issues that I'm passionate about.
Tim Scott
#50. 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
#52. I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
Kara Walker
#53. 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
#54. To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.
John Henrik Clarke
#55. I'm really looking forward to developing just really fun, complex, interesting stories about people who happen to be black.
Tracie Thoms
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. I want to be a Half Code. I want to be Black and White, the best of both.
Sally Green
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs.
Molly Ringwald
#75. 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
#76. In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.
Angela Davis
#77. People missed things. People didn't notice; people didn't care. People's own misperceptions made black into white, made grey into whatever they wanted it to be.
Judith Ivory
#78. Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie, till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#79. 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
#80. Words have power. And I may be privileged and have a higher IQ than any of our former teachers, but when people look at me? They see a black, male teenager. And there is nothing quite as frightening to some folks as an angry young black man.
Michelle Hodkin
#81. You don't have to be a certain thing to be cool. If you're white, you don't have to act black or whatever. Just be you and know who you are.
Wiz Khalifa
#82. You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music.
Lance Reddick
#83. I went to a predominantly white school, and I was the only black girl. I can remember thinking, 'I don't want to be as dark as I am - I want to be a little fairer.' I didn't want to be me.
Kelly Rowland
#84. It's funny because I went to a predominantly white school, but for some reason they always picked the musicals that were supposed to be done by totally black casts.
Dane DeHaan
#85. A woman can plan. A woman thinks she needs a man for nothing in this world but soon realizes she is wrong. The same way every black- owned business has to acquire goods from a white distributor, women have to do business with men, be it professional or personal, to achieve too many of our goals.
Eric Jerome Dickey
#86. I'm a facist about spoilers. I'm the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotions department. If I had my way, the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with a few words on them.
Brian Austin Green
#87. She is one of those black people who want to be the only black person in the room, so any other black person is an immediate threat to her.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#89. Falling into a black hole would not be pleasant, having your limbs torn asunder and all the while appearing to your friends to be frozen in time just as you fell in
Joanne Baker
#90. It was a figure of a whale, with a white triangle that was supposed to be its spray. The spray moved up and down above the blowhole. On top of the spray sat a black-haired woman.
Paul Fleischman
#91. And who shall you be once you don your grand disguise?"
"La luna," she said with a smile.
"Then I shall be la notte to your moon" Archer lifted the hard black mask he held and slipped it over his thinner silk one
Kristen Callihan
#92. I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere to be seen, dressed in his usual immaculate black jacket and pants.
And as those violet eyes met mine, as that familiar half smile faded
Sarah J. Maas
#93. Sirius was a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger.
J.K. Rowling
#94. It is hard to think of practical applications of the black hole. Because practical applications are so remote, many people assume we should not be interested. But this quest to understand the world is what defines us as human beings.
Yuri Milner
#95. Stupid presidents, smart presidents, white presidents, black presidents
doesn't work! What this country needs is a crazy Third World dictator. And Donald Trump has what it takes to be that. He's already got a plane with his name on it, solid gold buildings, a harem ...
Lewis Black
#96. It's not even about black and white anymore, because so many people are from mixed backgrounds and mixed ethnicities, and it's just a great time to be able to pull all that together.
George Lopez
#97. I'm usually all about the tight jeans and little T-shirt, but sometimes I want to put on a black, sequined dress and be a freaking girl
Britney Spears
#98. When guys in black Cadillacs drive you to some random building and lock you in what amounts to a cell, you know that shit just got real.
Nick Lake
#99. He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left -for some reason- green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#100. Barack Obama makes me feel good to be a black man.
Snoop Dogg
