Being Quote by Margot Lee Shetterly

Black people have to define who we are, or others do it for us.

— Baron Vaughn

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated, that we are indeed messy, that we do our best with…

— Viola Davis

There are places and spaces for black writers to write about race as a central thing. It's important. We're still dealing with the remnants…

— Kwame Alexander

Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers -…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Something that people talk about a lot in the Black community is how Black women hold it up, basically, and Black women don't get…

— Nia DaCosta

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

— James Earl Jones

African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but…

— Malcolm-Jamal Warner

There is much about the shared terrain of being a black person in the United States that is not seen on small or silver…

— Jenna Wortham

One of the things that's interesting about black culture is we don't know about our heritage and about our genealogy because it was taken…

— Xavier Woods

When you see a black guy on TV, he's always a thug or always portrayed as someone that's in trouble. It spreads the message…

— Thomas Jones

Black storytelling can be about anything, absolutely anything, and within that it can be as enriching, as complex, beautiful, ugly as anything else. We…

— Paterson Joseph

Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a…

— Derrick Bell