Reggae music don't really focus on one thing, you know. If reggae music is speaking about the struggle of people, and the suffering, it don't mean black people. It mean people in general.
So now I feel I'm lucky in the respect that I can sort of pick a little more carefully, which is tricky because as a black actress, there aren't that many roles to pick from.
Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.
Twitter could save a lot of money by writing its executives' names on their doors with pencil instead of fancy placards. Like an episode of 'Suits,' Twitter execs come, go, change jobs and disappear under black clouds every few minutes. Office administration costs must be astronomical!
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.
'Copper' is my first period piece. It's funny because I've been doing a lot of episodes of 'Elementary' with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu; they keep bringing me back on the show, and so I go from being an outstanding black doctor to being a kind of hood, ex-car thief who went through rehab in 'Elementary.'
I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.
I'm not that interested in fashion... When someone says that lime-green is the new black for this season, you just want to tell them to get a life.
Because I'm a young black man driving a really nice, expensive car, I sometimes get harassed when I'm rolling through a ghetto neighbourhood.
I like a kind of dark, bronze-y brown smoky eye with maybe some mascara, some contouring and stuff, but I don't like wearing black or pinks. I like it more tonal.
I'm for human lib, the liberation of all people, not just black people or female people or gay people.
I think anybody who is racist is an idiot whether they are black or white.
The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.
It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda.
My father and uncles and all their friends turned their lungs black trying to satisfy my collector's zeal.
I define my work as a feminist act and a political act because I'm black and a woman. You don't necessarily have to claim that, but the act of making art itself is a political and feminist act when you're a woman.
How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.
My work ethic came from my parents and my fear of failure. I came from a small, predominantly black school and I didn't want to let them down.
I used to tell Jackie (Robinson) sometimes when they were throwing at him, 'Jackie, they aren't throwing at you because you are black. They are throwing at you because they don't like you.
It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.
I wanted to be a leading man - the black lawyer, the black doctor, the black policeman.
In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.
I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's enough. You wouldn't look at these kids and say that they are Uncle Toms or self-hating or fleeing or trying to be white, given the culture in which they live, which is very natural to them as kids.
And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.
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.
There are so many aspects of human sexuality that we're afraid to talk about, because people still don't understand it. It's not just black and white, you know?
The black characters on TV are the sidekicks, or they're insignificant. You could put all the black sidekicks on one show, and it would be the most boring, one-dimensional show ever. Even look at the black women on 'Community' and 'Parks and Recreation' - they are the archetype of the large black women on television. Snide and sassy.
I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.
We're all very fond of a black box in our living room that works on diminishment of images, that spoons somebody up in a very limited way. It can be a reduction at its worst.
Black lives do matter, and our lives do hold value.
The problem is the following, black music is increasing encumbered by white elements, often pleasant but always superfluous, easily and advantageously replaced with black elements.
I'm working on a second cookbook and am working on my love story, 'Black Heels to Tractor Wheels.'
When I went to drama school, I knew I was at least as talented as other students, but because I was a black man and I wasn't pretty, I knew I would have to work my butt off to be the best that I would be, and to be noticed.
'To Kill a Mockingbird' is really two stories. One is a coming-of-age tale told from the point of view of Scout Finch, a girl of about nine, and her slightly older brother, Jem. The second story concerns their father, attorney Atticus Finch, who has been appointed to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping a white woman.
I think it talks about the fact that there are black people in the world who have tremendous amount of talents and have no channel through which they can those talents.
One of my favorite stories was Black Orchid, because it was so different from all the others. I especially enjoyed dancing the Charleston. I have always been keen on dancing.
