Being Black Quotes

“What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children.”
― Rhonda M. Roorda, In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

“You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs, nor to the insidious activity of the streets.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“[Phone interview transcript between author Roorda & Vershawn A. Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, a book based on his Ph.D dissertation]

Now the subtitle, Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, what does that cover?

It covers the range of enactments in speech, in dress, in the way we behave, the way that we interact with other people. Basically, it is the range of enactments that black people have to go through to be successful in America. I call it the burden of racial performance that black people are required, not only by whites but by other blacks as well, to prove through their behaviors, their speech, and their actions the kind of black person that they are. Really, there are only two kinds you can be. In the words of comedian Chris Rock, you can either be a black person, which is a respectable, bourgeois, middle-class black person, or you can be a nigger. As Chris Rock says in his show, "I love black people, but I hate niggers."

So . . . when a black person walks into a room, always in the other person's mind is the question "What kind of black person is this in front of me?" They are looking for clues in your speech, in your demeanor, in your behavior, and in everything that you do -- it is like they are hyperattentive to your ways of being in order to say, "Okay, this is a real black person. I can trust them. I'll let them work here. Or, nope: this is a nigger, look at the spelling of their name: Shaniqua or Daquandre." We get discriminated against based on our actions. So that is what the subtitle was trying to suggest in performing race. And in performing literacy, just what is the prescribed means for increasing our class status? A mind-set: "Okay, black people, you guys have no excuse. You can go to school and get an education like everybody else." I wanted to pay attention to the ways in which school perpetuated a structural racism through literacy, the way in which it sort of stigmatizes and oppresses blackness in a space where it claims it is opening up opportunities for black people.”
― Rhonda M. Roorda, In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

“When white people accuse you of "pulling the race card"―don't even deny it! Tell them; "Yeah, it's the only card I've got while you enjoy a full deck.”
― Sasha Scarr

“in the car park a young father whispers
weed smoke about how his life feels,
like that burnt-out car that never moves,
the one with the shattered windows
leaving diamond tears in the asphalt.”
― Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise

“And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason. A dim notion of what life meant to a Negro in America was coming to consciousness in me, not in terms of external events, lynchings, Jim Crowism, and the endless brutalities, but in terms of crossed-up feeling, of psyche pain. I sensed that Negro life was a sprawling land of unconscious suffering, and there were but few Negroes who knew the meaning of their lives, who could tell their story.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“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.”
― Percival Everett, Erasure

“To be a black person is to understand what it is to be automatically infantilized and have it be assumed that you don’t have the talent or the skill set required to do your job”
― Gabrielle Union, We're Going to Need More Wine

“Still, it was impossible to be a black kid at a mostly white school and not feel the shadow of affirmative action. You could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze of certain students and even some professors, as if they wanted to say, I know why you’re here”. These moments could be demoralizing, even if I’m sure I was just imagining some of it. It planted a seed of doubt. Was I here merely as part of a social experiment?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Being Black can be hard sometimes, and it can be harder if you’re a woman.”
― Okechukwu Nzelu, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney

“Xenophobia is real.
I know it from my experience.
Racism is real.
I know it from my experience.
Misogyny is real.
I know it from my experience.
Don't deny its existence just because you didn't experience it firsthand.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“I was also aware of the fact that in the black community, respectability politics was often seen as being at odds with what it meant to be "authentically black." To me, there was not such thing as being authentically black. OF course, being seen as "authentically white" wasn't something my white peers had to concern themselves with.”
― Zachary Wood, Uncensored

“But trying to undo the worry is like trying to undo his blackness.”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“OBGs. "Other Black Girls," Lynn had dubbed them, "because they're not our kind." They were something else entirely. Something close to alien....”
― Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl

“I fix my face into a tight, plastic smile so my resting expression can't be misread as unfriendly -- or, even worse, aggressive.”
― Elise Bryant, It's Elementary

“...it was so hard for Pearl to find something with a character who looked like her..." And after thirty minutes of watching her flip through all the books with white kids or animals, only to spend a small fortune on erasers and light-up gel pens, I may have made a snarky comment to the mom at the register.”
― Elise Bryant, It's Elementary

“You just looks so young!"

....I barely belong here at these school events, single and Black, so every time I hear this, it's like they're confirming that, too. It makes me want to roll out my whole resume to justify my place, Like, I have a master's degree from UCLA, lady! I was eight month's pregnant with Pearl at the ceremony, but still! I'm grown, just like you! I use Sensodyne, and I have enough white hairs that I can't keep casually plucking them without looking like a "before" in one of those women's hair loss Instagram ads I keep getting, and I am pretty sure my back hurts more than it doesn't hurt now....”
― Elise Bryant, It's Elementary

“Less dead" homicide victims, a term credited to criminologist Steven Egger, have historically been not as thoroughly investigated as their wealthier, whiter, and perhaps more sober counterparts. Pretty white college students are the most dead. Black transgender hookers with addiction issues are the least dead.”
― Jillian Lauren, Behold the Monster: Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

“Sam and I talked that first day about our childhoods, about our first loves, about his family tree, which includes (it really does) both Malcolm X and Little Richard.”
― Jillian Lauren, Behold the Monster: Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

“New York looked like someone put Magic Grow on Miami, strung the whole thing with Christmas lights, then ground about a billion pounds of soot into it.”
― Jillian Lauren, Behold the Monster: Confronting America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

“The following morning Blossom sat at the back of the church with a pounding headache. It was from all the thinking, plus the singing and the tambourines.”
― Mel Pennant, A Murder for Miss Hortense

“Bola bit down hard on a piece of celery: she hadn't been this entertained since O.J. decided to drive away.”
― Mel Pennant, A Murder for Miss Hortense