Quotes about blackness

Andrena Sawyer -

To my Black brothers and sisters, choose faith. As difficult as it is, choose faith—the kind of faith that we know without works is dead. The faith that raises awareness, educates the community, advocates, cares for the widows and feeds the orphans. Choose the faith that is compelled to action, but not controlled my anger.

Frank B. Wilderson III -

If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the "Negro" has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today - even in the most anti-racist movements, like the prison abolition movement - invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, but it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance wi

Jesmyn Ward - Carol Anderson

Remember a Florida judge instructing a jury to focus only on the moment when George Zimmerman and Trayvon Marton interacted, thus transforming a seventeen-year-old, unarmed kid into a big, scary black guy, while the grown man who stalked him through the neighborhood with a loaded gun becomes a victim.

Darnell Lamont Walker -

Black people are either threats or entertainment.

Jay-Z - Decoded

I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell.There's Heaven then there's Hell niggasOne day your cruisin' in your seven,Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies,Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' upHit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicleEverything was all good just a week ago'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you?Ready to start snitchin' ain't you?I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't youAside from the fast carsHoneys that shake they ass in barsYou know you wouldn't be involvedW

Darnell Lamont Walker -

America's put American Black Folks in such a bad position, empty plates and glasses now get us full.

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me

[whiteness] has no real meaning divorced from the machinery of criminal power. The new people were something else before they were white—Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish—and if all our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again. Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myth. I cannot call it. As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in bei

Munia Khan -

I want to be a guileless rook to discolor the blackness of all crafty human hearts

Sylvia Plath -

All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.

Bonnie Greer - A Parallel Life

When I was a child, to call someone 'black' was an insult, a curse word, something that made you fight.But to me it contains all of the history of oppression and resistance, of being close to the soil and the sky, of plain speaking. Of The Journey.

Habeeb Akande -

It's ironic when black non-Muslims say Islam is not a religion that uplifts black people when two of the most celebrated black heroes in recent history were both Muslim Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

Erik Tanghe -

White stars don't mix with the dark blackness of the universe. If they did... everything would be grey

Jay Woodman - Riding the Escalator and Terra Affirmative

Inside my head / or in a distant / Galaxy / Soft I hear it / Calling me." from the song "In the Blackness" in the poetry collection "Terra Affirmative".

S.K. Tremayne -

We're all astronauts, really, aren't we; interstellar astronauts, travelling so far into the blackness we can never return.

Justin Ordoñez - Sykosa

Outside, the sun shines. Inside, there’s only darkness. The blackness is hard to describe, as it’s more than symptoms. It’s a nothing that becomes everything there is. And what one sees is only a fraction of the trauma inflicted.

Malebo Sephodi -

Yes, many years of oppression may have complicated things and it seems impossible for blacks to create their own means of production. But, I truly believe that we must start somewhere. We must reimagine a world where we are proudly black and support all things black in order to reinvent the economic wheel. We talk. We produce theories. We prove ourselves and and and... But we must also put our money where our mouths and theories are. This is why we fight each and every single day.

Elizabeth Alexander - The Light of the World

It’s a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art.

James Baldwin -

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply i

Yann Martel - Life of Pi

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

Kim Harrison - A Fistful of Charms

You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time.""Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant

Stacey Lee - Under a Painted Sky

What good's a black face if it means I'm just someone else's property? Why give me these arms and legs just to carry someone else's load, not my own?

Jean Rhys - Midnight

You are walking along a road peacefully. You trip. You fall into blackness. That's the past - or perhaps the future. And you know that there is no past, no future, there is only this blackness, changing faintly, slowly, but always the same.

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me

You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs, nor to the insidious activity of the streets.

Thomas Ligotti - Grimscribe: His Lives and Works

The worst fear of the race yes, the world suddenly transformed into a senseless nightmare, horrible dissolution of things. Nothing compares, even oblivion is a sweet dream. You understand why, of course. Why this peculiar threat. These brooding psyches, all the busy minds everywhere. I hear them buzzing like flies in the blackness. I see them as glow worms flitting in the blackness. They are struggling, straining every second to keep the sky above them, to keep the sun in the sky, to keep the de

Shannon A. Thompson - Minutes Before Sunset

Shadows could be anywhere in blackness. (Eric)

Carl Sagan -

There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty.This picture is strangely frightenin

Munia Khan -

Do not trap yourself into an owl's hooting soundwhere sad nights linger through the blackness of a hound

Charles Lee -

I preach darkness. I don't inspire hope—only shadows. It's up to you to find the light in my words.

Christina Engela - Blachart

The universe is so vast, so immense, we can never expect to explore it all. It is in effect, not so much a final frontier as an ultimate frontier; the ultimate frontier – as wide as it is deep. Stars shine coldly in the unimaginable blackness. Out of the darkness, a tiny speck caught the distant light of stars – a tiny gray speck that, as it moved, seemed to grow larger, catching the light just so until it revealed itself to be a ship.

Ta Nahesi Coates -

We will always be black, you and I, even if it means different things in different places. France is built on its own dream, on its collection of bodies, and recall that your very name is drawn from a man who opposed France and its national project of theft by colonization. It is true that our color was not our distinguishing feature there, so much as the Americanness represented in our poor handle on French. And it is true that there is something particular about how the Americans who think the

Tsitsi Dangarembga - Nervous Conditions

It’s bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.

Beth Revis - The Body Electric

Or… maybe I’m not going crazy. “Maybe I’m some sort of android-cyborg-clone-thing, and I’m just breaking down.I’m not sure which way is worse.Dad laughs. “You’re not in your right mind, dear,” he says. “No, no, no, you’re not.”And then——Silence.Dad fades away. The reverie chair disappears.There’s just blackness. I remember then that I am in the reverie of something dead. Whatever that thing was, it was dead.And, just as I’m starting to wonder if, perhaps, I have died, too, I see a light, far awa

Kamand Kojouri -

I can sense your love,why leave me in darkness?Beguile me for your amusement,stealing my soul without kisses. You are the sun and I, the moon. Your beauty is reflected in my eyes.When we are apart, I am extinguishedin the blackness of these skies.

Ken Hutcherson -

If you remove Al Sharpton’s blackness, he disappears. He’s transparent. There’s nothing there because he bases his whole life on his blackness. Me, I’m a black man; but my blackness has submission to my Christianity.

Brom -

Magic?" What did magic have to do with breaking into someone's store and stealing their stuff?"Don't you get it?" Peter said. "You're free now. You don't have to live by their rules anymore." Peter pointed into the inky blackness of the basement. "The darkness is calling. A little danger, a little risk. Feel your heart race, listen to it. That's the sound of being alive. It's your time, Nick. Your one chance to have fun before it's all stolen by them, the adults, with their cruelty and endless r

Robert Fanney -

A song she heardOf cold that gathersLike winter's tongueAmong the shadowsIt rose like blacknessIn the skyThat on volcano'sVomit riseA Stone of ruinFrom burn to chillLike black moonriseHer voice fell still...

Munia Khan -

Let my toes teach the shore how to feel a tranquil lifethrough the wetness of sands Let my heart latch the doorof blackness, as all my pain now blue sky understands