What's hardest for me to swallow is when there is a love story, say, with a really high-profile male star and there's no reason I can't play the part. They say, 'Oh, we love Halle, we just don't want to go black with this part.'
I don't want to have people brought in simply because they are black or Asian.
Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited and photographed these extraordinarily well-preserved Stalinist time capsules.
Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.
The first term of the Clinton administration was very jolly. Everybody was running around meeting people and of course, in the second term, everyone went down the black hole, which also happened at the end of the Reagan administration.
I was kind of a dark kid. I loved Halloween, and I loved vampires and the black and white old monster movies.
I've always waitressed between roles. When 'Black Mirror' was on, I was still flipping burgers. Customers would recognise me while asking for extra ketchup, which was pretty embarrassing.
If there was a blacker color than black, I would wear it.
Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.
When I was first starting out, you'd have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody.
At the end of all this, Russia held in her hands a vast belt of land running from the Baltic sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, comprising eleven nations with a population of 100 million people.
This marched was planned to be non violent and non confrontational, and gladly it stayed that way. What really impressed me was the self discipline of the Black Block.
I mean, I'm pretty good in real life, but sometimes people seem surprised that I'm like a normal teenager and wear black nail polish and I'm just a little bit more edgy than the person I play on television.
There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.
When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat - which isn't there.
All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.
This is our culture, and I don't care who the musician is, if he avoids black people, then he is scared of something. He doesn't have confidence in himself or else he doesn't believe in what he's doing.
There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.
If you are a Democrat, and you get less than 90% of the black vote, you are going to likely lose your election.
I carry a lot of feminine energy as well as masculine energy, and that's the hit that people are getting. That vulnerable thing is not what we assume with black males. You get it, and then they cease to become scary. They become human. You cease to have a bogeyman.
In the end, the only heritage we have is our planet, and I have decided to go to the most pristine places on the planet and photograph them in the most honest way I know, with my point of view, and of course it is in black and white, because it is the only thing I know how to do.
Through the marginalization of black fathers and encouragement of destruction lifestyle choices, the progressive Left has cut off one of the lifelines to raising healthy, happy, children intent on bettering themselves and their community.
Black music has increased my enjoyment of what I do. It has increased my range, my ability to reach into myself and accept myself.
It's about you. If you win, it's you; if you lose, it's you. Black and white. Nowhere to hide.
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.
The Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
History is history, and it has to be told, and with 'Mudbound,' it's beautiful because you get to sit with both sides - the white and the black - and see where we meet each other at the end of the day and see where we tear each other apart.
I would love to see as many of the black players as possible in today's Major League Baseball make every effort to go to the Negro Leagues Museum and get a first-hand view of how it all started.
I start every morning at 7 or 7:30 in the same place - my little office where it's dark and cozy - with a cup of the same really strong black coffee. It's my little cocoon. There's no phone or fax or Internet. And no music.
Here's my definition of a great beach read - a fabulous story that sucks me in like a black hole and when it's over, it jettisons my bones across the galaxy with a hair on fire mission to convince everyone I know that they must read that book or they will die.
You know what? As a black person, you see so much racism. Films are no different than the government, politics - it's everywhere. It's not exclusively film. It's infuriating to see it in film. But my being in film changes things.
There are some in black robes sitting on federal benches all across this country. They're Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and even conservatives that pervert the Constitution.
I'm in a generation where MAC is the reigning brand for a lot of women - black, white, and other.
I accept you, and you get the same respect from me whether you are black, white, gay straight, Asian, bisexual, Australian, tall, fat, whatever it is. We are all people, and I look at the people of the world the same way, as my brothers and sisters.
I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.
