Black Women Quotes

If you go to a network and say, "I wanna do prison stories about black women and Latino women and old women," you're not gonna make a sale. But, if you've got this blonde girl going to prison, you can get in there, and then you can tell all the stories. I just thought it was a terrific gateway drug into all the things I wanted to get into.

You have to start looking in the mirror and saying, 'this is who I am, this is what I am and this is how I'm going to be' and start demanding more from yourself. In spite of everything that this system has thrown at us, we still have to live at the end of the day. We still have to find purpose and find ways to prosper and make a profit so you have to find ways to stand on your own two feet and fulfill your potential as a black man or black woman on this planet no matter how marginalized or oppressed you may be.

The roles that I feel I get, or handed to me, or whatever, are not that interesting. I don't think it's a problem that's specific to black women. I think it's a problem that's specific to movie-making in America.

I love writing about black women, but if you go beyond that, we're human beings - and because we're human beings, it's universal for everybody.

For black women our sense of ourselves is not always consistent with the way other people see us.

From childhood forward, our hair is one of the most critical, defining aspects of our embodied selves as black women: how we get it done... how we have to focus on it... the questions we have to answer about it... and so forth.

Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society.

The first rule about a black woman’s hair is you don’t talk about a black woman’s hair. And the second rule is you don’t ever touch a black woman’s hair without getting written permission first.

Feminism as a theoretical enterprise is approached differently by Black women depending on where we are. There are more reformist Black women who tend to use the phrase "Black feminism".

There's so much about the strong black woman stereotype that makes us forget that we do need and deserve help and care.

At this time I'd like to say a few words especially to my sisters: SISTERS. BLACK PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE FREE UNLESS BLACK WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR STRUGGLE, ON EVERY LEVEL OF OUR STRUGGLE.

No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.

We're going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people -- especially black women. We've been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here.

Radical militant feminist believes that women of color and Black women in particular have written the cutting edge theory and really were the individuals who exploded feminist theory into the directions that has made it more powerful. So I see us as the leaders not just of Black people and Black women in terms of feminism but in terms of the movement as a whole.

Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.

Having Black hair is unique in that Black women change up styles a lot. You can walk down one street block in New York City and see 10 different hairstyles that Black women are wearing: straight curls, short cuts, braids - we really run the gamut.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.

Also, I learned whether you are gay, bisexual, it doesn't matter, you know... because, at the end of the day, they're both gross. But mostly, I learned that elderly black women are wise beyond their years... but younger black women are prostitutes.

What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month, begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will never attain. Roth is a petty bigot and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a buffoon to scholars the world over.

In our young minds houses belonged to women were their special domain, not as property, but as places where all that truly mattered in life took place - the warmth and comfort of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our souls. There we learned dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith. The folks who made this life possible, who were our primary guides and teachers, were black women.

It's black women as perpetual sidekick. We need to hear from more women's voices. And it would be nice to see some books geared toward us.

Every time I embrace a black woman I’m embracing slavery, and when I put my arms around a white woman, well, I’m hugging freedom. The white man forbade me to have the white woman on pain of death... I will not be free until the day I can have a white woman in my bed.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I know there are a lot of eyes on me now from young girls, and it makes me so proud. The only Black woman examples aren't Rihanna and Beyoncé. It makes me proud that I am a classical ballerina and they can look at me and see another way to succeed. That is setting a new standard.

I don't think it's a bad thing to play a character that's not necessarily a super-woman. Even if the character is a little bit stereotypical, as long as the whole story is good and positive, or makes some sort of important statement, I think it's okay. But, on the whole, you can't just do that, especially as a black woman. It's more of a responsibility. You've gotta let the world see black women being successful, strong, smart, with power and who are self-possessed.

The inspiration for this movie [Something New] was this Newsweek article that came out a couple of years ago that talks about 42.4 percent of black women in America aren't married. Black women are shooting up the corporate ladder way faster than our black male counterparts. And (black men) are either dating outside their race, in jail or dying. And so if you want to have a family, you want to be married, you have to look at other options.

Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me everything that I must know. Hold nothing back.

Major problem for Black women, and all people of color, when we are challenged to oppose anti-Semitism, is our profound skepticism that white people can actually be oppressed.

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

Black women have always been these vixens, these animalistic erotic women. Why can't we just be the sexy American girl next door?

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.

I speak about androids because I think the android represents the new 'other.' You can compare it to being a lesbian or being a gay man or being a black woman ... What I want is for people who feel oppressed or feel like the 'other' to connect with the music and to feel like, 'She represents who I am.'

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. … We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it's no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits.

Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living.

If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.

You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, "Excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction." It's just an experience, just an experience.

My mom is Jamaican and Chinese, and my dad is Polish and African American, so I'm pretty mixed. My nickname in high school was United Nations. I was fine with it, even though I identify as a black woman. People don't realize it hurts my feelings when someone looks at my hair or my eyes, and says, "But you're not actually black. You're black, but you're not black black, because your eyes are green." I'm like, "What? No, no, I'm definitely black." Even some of my closest friends have said that. It's been a bit touchy for me.

Identity is very personal...identity is political. My identity is what is and it is what it's gonna be. And I don't think that any information will change that profoundly...I [already] know that I am a Black woman, and a Black woman who has mixed some heritage, like most African Americans.

Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a 'brother.'

I don't drink or do any drugs. I never have and I never will. I don't need them. I'm a black woman from the land of the free, home of the brave, and I figure I don't need another illusion.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

I've always believed that I could do whatever I set my mind to do.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

Never mind what you've heard. Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was actually the 74th white one. And never mind all this talk about America electing its first black President; Barack Obama is actually the 44th white man to hold the job.

It is the mind that makes the body.