From racial profiling and being pulled over just for ‘driving while black’ to this new phenomenon of killing unarmed people out of some preconceived idea of fear, our lives and our children’s lives are not being valued. – Al Sharpton
In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts. – Alexander Cockburn
It didn’t matter as much because I’m a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I’m part black. – Carly Simon
I’ve diced with death the most cycling around London. Black cabs are far more dangerous than polar bears. – Ben Saunders
I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities. – August Wilson
It’s a significant question: should black people only adopt black children, and white people white children? – Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
If they had not murdered Malcolm X, there probably never would have been a Black Panther Party. – Bobby Seale
And I was the only black kid in my school for almost all of my childhood, until I was a teenager. So imagine, if you will, being 6 feet tall by third grade, so essentially being a living maypole. – Aisha Tyler
There were days I could barely struggle into a size 46 or 48, months of larges and XXLs, and endless rounds of leggings with the elastic at the waist stretched to its limit and beyond – topped with the fashion equivalent of a tea cozy. And always black, because I was in mourning for my slimmer self. – Carrie Fisher
Unlike earlier black-power movements that tried to fight or segregate for self-preservation, Black Lives Matter aligns with the dead, continues the mourning, and refuses the forgetting in front of all of us. – Claudia Rankine
I am black, and there’s no getting around that, but being black doesn’t define every aspect of my life. – Aisha Tyler
I feel like a lot of black men ‘put on’ because of what they see and because of what people tell them they have to be. – Ashton Sanders
It turns out that a Nobel is also followed by other recognitions, and perhaps the most unexpected of these is that the Japan Karate Association in Tokyo has now made me an honorary 7th-degree black belt, something that, given my athletic abilities, is even more unimaginable than being an Economic Sciences Laureate. – Alvin E. Roth
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
Everyone always asks, ‘Did you ever rebel? Did you dye your hair blue? Did you wear black nail polish?’ I mean, of course, there have been episodes when you wear weird-colored lipstick… But generally, I think I was pretty much the way I am now. – Aerin Lauder
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America. – Barack Obama
Eventually I got the call for ‘Iron Man,’ and I read sides that had nothing to do with what I did in the movie, and I performed it once while no one was in the room – it was videotaped, and I’m sure Shane Black was watching it from his helicopter or something. And then I got a call the next day that I was going down to shoot it. – Adam Pally
Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. – Coretta Scott King
I can’t negate the theory that the Huxtables on ‘The Cosby Show’ may have helped pave the way for the Obama family. People enjoyed watching that black family. – Bill Cosby
With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song. – Carrie Brownstein
I always think – when I get mad, and people say, ‘Don’t be the angry black woman’ – it’s like, well, why not? There’s so much to be angry about. – Aja Naomi King
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
A typical native New Yorker, I’m prone to wearing the city’s unofficial sartorial color: black. – Amanda Hearst
Kaizad Gustad is quite crazy, and he has weird ideas, and ‘Boom’ is one such idea. It’s a crazy film by a crazy guy. It’s almost a satire, a black comedy. – Amitabh Bachchan
I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor – and it’s one that I enjoy extremely. – Ava DuVernay
I don’t think that a vote for Barack Obama is a symbolic thing. I think it’s much more than that. It’s not just a black man. It’s not just a feel-good vote. It’s the idea of electing someone who really does want to make a difference. – Aunjanue Ellis
Black women are supposed to be ‘strong,’ but the burden of carrying our race and carrying our families adds the pressure. – Aunjanue Ellis