Quotes About Race

When I talk about feminism, sometimes I feel like being a black woman is cast aside.

I define my work as a feminist act and a political act because I'm black and a woman. You don't necessarily have to claim that, but the act of making art itself is a political and feminist act when you're a woman.

Clearly, a large number of African-Americans don't have faith that the laws are being executed fairly in Ferguson, and that's a problem... We need to ensure Africans-Americans feel confident in the rule of law.

I thought I was half white or something because I only know white people as Ferguson as their last name.

When you get close to race day, there's that anticipation and excitement - it's the same whatever level you're running at because the marathon is like a festival.

I've always been interested in showing our films to international audiences. The easiest way is through the festival circuit, a big marketing platform for films that aren't big enough to be in the mainstream race.

There are few things more American than falling back on the language of race when what we're really talking about is class or, more accurate still, manners, values and taste.

Race drivers are fiercely competitive animals, and there is often a conflict between what is right for the team and what is right for the individual.

We've been fighting our whole lives to say we're just human beings like everyone else. When we start separating ourselves in our work, that doesn't help the cause. I've heard it for years: 'How do you feel being a black filmmaker?' I'm not a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a black man, I have black children. But I'm just a filmmaker.

All too often, white documentary filmmakers are the ones telling the stories of people of color.

I'm so black, I leave fingerprints on coal.

In cycling, you just race. When you get to the finish, you see the result.

In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.

During the protracted tooth-and-nail tussle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, I was one of those fierce partisans desperate for the first black candidate with a serious shot at the White House to win the nomination.

Black women don't have the same body image problems as white women. They are proud of their bodies.

Some black women hug me and walk away. A lot of black men talk about dating white women and how they've been there, too. People open up about their racial experiences. I feel like I'm a walking therapy session. It's quite intense. But it means a lot to people.

There's a lot of ways that white women undermine women of color, and black women in particular.

Black women are three times as likely to die giving birth or shortly after birth as white women. Black women in the United States die having a child at roughly the same rate as women in Mongolia.

As long as white people put people of color, African Americans and Latinos, in the same dispensable bag, and look at our children of color as insignificant and treat women of color as not as deserving of protection as white women, we will never achieve true equality.

White women love me 'cause of my edge. And I love white women.

Ethnic minority women generally have poorer outcomes from their pregnancy compared to white women.

For black people, everything we do has to be ratified and endorsed by a power structure that is white. And that reinforces a kind of racial hierarchy where whiteness is the privileged position to be in, and ethnicity is problematic.

I don't think people in America understand race, and how deep the hooks of whiteness there are in our consciousness.

My privileged upbringing and education and linguistic fluency gave me such proximity to whiteness that it stung all the more to still find myself outside of it. My mother, on the other hand, not only accepted that she would always be an outsider in this country but also believed it to be a finer fate and home than any other she could have had.