Black Woman Quotes

The truth is there are two hundred white women raped in America by a black man for every one black woman raped by whites. ~ David Duke

I am shedding.
I am not a new me.
I am my old me in my new me.
I remain, carved with the soul of my knife.
My mess scattered all over my countenance.
I am me.
Take me as I am. ~ Malebo Sephodi

The black woman had had to struggle against being a person of great strength. ~ Dorothy Height

It's not impossible for a woman - a Black woman - to become President. ~ Carol Moseley Braun

Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain't gonna be at the perfect time. You're married, they're single. That's right. You're Jewish, they're Palestinian. You're a Mexican, they're a raccoon. You're a black woman, he's a black man. ~ Chris Rock

She's an original! She doesn't need to compete, copy, or envy other women. The confidence that's within her won't allow her to stoop that low. She's a Queen! And jealousy isn't something that she cares to entertain. Insecurity isn't in her DNA. She shines! She succeeds! She's a quality woman with purpose! She empowers, inspires, motivates, and celebrates other women. But depending on how you feel about yourself, you'll either admire and respect her or hate on her. Listen, it's okay to acknowledge other Queens! Don't be an undercover hater. Have self-confidence and allow YOUR light to shine. ~ Stephanie Lahart

But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people. ~ James Lee Burke

What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor - even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

Lincoln is nowhere saying that blacks are inferior. He is not saying he rejects the idea of blacks marrying whites. He is simply refusing to go there. He is keeping the debate where it ought to be, on the simple question of whether people should be permitted to steal other people's life and labor by enslaving them. Of the black woman he says, "In her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal and the equal of all others."20 ~ Dinesh D'Souza

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. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

I used to think I was ugly. I thought I looked like a camel. A person who doesn't love themselves, they will see anything that pops up on their face. I've seen squirrels, I've seen a bird, and I've seen all kinds of animals on my face. But that is the result of self-hate. I've learned to say: 'You know what? I am a beautiful black woman'. ~ Mary J. Blige

Dealing with white people faux pas as a black woman is tricky: if you get upset, you can be quickly be labeled as the "angry black girl"; if you're too passive, it seems like you're give permission, or letting racism slide. ~ Franchesca Ramsey

In this culture, the phrase 'black woman' is not synonymous with 'tender,' or 'gentle.' It's as if those words couldn't possibly speak to the reality of black females. ~ Bell Hooks

You're not the first black woman Alex has hired to work for her family, and you probably won't be the last.'

'Okay...?' Emira sat down. She didn't mean to sound flippant, but she doubted that Kelley could really tell her anything she didn't already know. Emira had met several 'Mrs. Chamberlains' before...It wasn't that Emira didn't understand the racially charged history that Kelley was alluding to, but she couldn't help but think that if she weren't working for this Mrs. Chamberlain, she'd probably be working for another one. ~ Kiley Reid

Anytime you're with somebody, you become a reflection of that person. I believe the first five years of our relationship was me grooming her, getting her tough and getting her ready for all of this and how to deal with it. The last was just her being a strong Black woman who has her man's back. ~ Snoop Dogg

Lend stood up, shouldering his duffel bag, as I walked back into the living room. "Where do you think you're going?" I snatched his coat away and held it. He just got here. There was no way I was letting him go anywhere else.
"I happen to have very important things to do."
"What on earth is more important than watching Easton Heights??"
"Christmas shopping for you?"
I dropped the coat into his arms and opened the door. "Take your time."
"Glad to know I'll be missed."
"Have fun!" I leaned up and kissed him hard, then shoved him out and sat back on the couch with a sloppy smile on my face. "Best boyfriend ever."
"Shut. Up. Now." Arianna didn't move, eyes fixed on the television. A firm knock sounded on the door. "And tell Lend he can just walk in already!"
"Did you forget something?" I said as I opened the door, surprised to see a short black woman in a suit. And not Lend pretending to be one, either. ~ Kiersten White

I am an educated black woman in a time when educated black people will be called upon to risk everything for the rights of black people everywhere. ~ Allan Dare Pearce

Being a black woman, I've often felt I've been judged by my sex and my race, and I have always known that it shouldn't hamper me. ~ Halle Berry

I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales. ~ Roxane Gay

My Soul to Keep is the ultimate love story with a black man and a black woman. I call it the ultimate love story. It's about an immortal. We're shooting for this Fall and that's been a six year development right there. ~ Blair Underwood

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people. ~ Alice Walker

I used to think that I could be successful if I pretended to be a 23-year-old black woman. I wanted to find a young black woman who would be willing to go in on this with me. I would write her novels, and then she would do the touring. I always thought I was too old and the wrong color. ~ Edmund White

... is inhabited by a Mrs. Buckle,four children,a fat black woman, and myself and a man. ~ Robert Gould Shaw

As a black woman who grows up in a predominantly white neighborhood, you learn how to perform a 'good' version of yourself. And then when you're with your home girls, you're saying all kinds of stuff that sounds all kinds of crazy, but you understand each other because you're speaking the way that you're comfortable with. ~ Katori Hall

The only crime I'm guilty of is being a young black woman. ~ Foxy Brown

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman ... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland. ~ Trevor Noah

This is a career about images. It's celluloid; they last for ever. I'm a black woman from America. My people were slaves in America, and even though we're free on paper and in law, I'm not going to allow you to enslave me on film, in celluloid, for all to see. ~ Angela Bassett

If you are a black woman, you get two history months in a row. ~ Artie Lange

I'm a black woman who loves hair. I enjoy changing my hair, having fun with it - just hair! I go from braids, to weaves, to wigs, to natural hair. ~ Tasha Smith

Black Barbie? Nah… I'm an unapologetic Exquisite Black Queen who's intelligent, creative, courageous, confident, ambitious, and authentic. My beauty is just a bonus! ~ Stephanie Lahart

Natural Hair is an Exquisite Crown. It's a wonder and fascination to many. But to the confident Black girl or Black woman who's rockin' it, they know what they've been born and blessed with. A head full of unique, healthy beauty. NATURAL BEAUTY. ~ Stephanie Lahart

He opened his mouth to protest, but she gave him her angry-black-woman death stare until he calmed down. She then strapped her grenade launcher to her back, slipped on her mask, pushed aside the metal latrine, and dropped into the sewer. ~ Thomas Greanias

There are not many of us African American Sister Presidents, and those of us who are in this field do not have an easy time of it. Why the story goes that one Black woman college president died and went to hell, and it was two weeks before she realized that she wasn't still on the job. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else. ~ Audre Lorde

I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked - our community was attacked. Now, I gotta get in their face. I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be a black woman. And I'm proud to be gay. ~ Wanda Sykes

Many of the white women at Mills who called themselves feminists didn't understand my experiences as a black woman. In women's studies classes, for example, the individual histories and struggles of black women were often ignored...I declared myself a womanist when I realized that white women's feminism really didn't speak to my needs as the daughter of a black, single, domestic worker. I felt that, historically, white women were working hard to liberate themselves from housework and childcare, while women of color got stuck cleaning their kitchens and raising their babies. When I realized that feminism largely liberated white women at the economic and social expense of women of color, I knew I was fundamentally unable to call myself a feminist. ~ Taigi Smith

When I was twelve years old, I looked in the mirror and I saw what I perceived to be my faults and my mother's faults. These coalesced into a dark mark that I would carry through my life, a coating of what I saw, which came from others' hatred of me, and all this forested a hatred of myself. I thought being unwanted and abandoned and persecuted was the legacy of the poor southern Black woman. But as an adult, I see my mother's legacy anew. I see how all the burdens she bore, the burdens of her history and identity and of our country's history and identity , enable her to manifest her greatest gifts. My mother had the courage to look at four hungry children and find a way to fill them. My mother had the strength to work her body to its breaking point to provide for herself and her children. My mother had the residence to cobble together a family from the broken bits of another. And my mother's example teaches me other things: This how a transplanted people survived a holocaust and slavery. This is how Black people in the South organized to vote under the shadow of terrorism and the noose. This is how human begins sleep and wake and fight and survive. In the end, this is a how a mother teaches her daughter to have courage, to have strength, to be resilient, to open her eyes to what it is, and to make something of it. ~ Jesmyn Ward

In New York - the New York of her own time, at least - they would have been objects of scorn and anger, the butt of every idiot's crude, cruel jokes: a black woman of twenty-six and her whitebread lover who was three years younger and who had a tendency to talk like dis and dat when he got excited. Her whitebread lover who had been carrying a heavy monkey on his back only eight months before. Here, there was no one to jeer or laugh. Here, no one was pointing a finger. Here, there were only Roland, Eddie, and herself, the world's last three gunslingers. ~ Stephen King

Exquisite... I was born this way! ~ Stephanie Lahart

I am a black woman, and my experiences would not be what they are if I wasn't. I'm so happy to share those experiences for other people to be able to learn from them. ~ Misty Copeland

To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others. ~ Malebo Sephodi

I'm speaking from personal experience when I say of any black man who conks today, or any white-wigged black woman, that if they gave the brains in their heads just half as much attention as they do their hair, they would be a thousand times better off. ~ Malcolm X

It is a dangerous time to be a black woman in America. It's a time when we are not safe in the streets or at home or at school or at work and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody. Not us. Not our mommas. Not the police. Not the people we elected to look out for our interests. Nobody. We're just out here. (p.53) ~ Pearl Cleage

Cobb was in a Klan group back in the 60's, and told me stories about how they used to throw live 'coons, possums, porcupines, or ganders into Black houses at night in attempts to run them out of Johnston and Harnett County. Cobb said that late one night, he and three or four other local rednecks snuck up on the house of one Black family, peered through the window and saw a huge Black woman sitting in front of a TV watching Gunsmoke, with a gang of children all around her.
The window was open and Cobb threw a live possum in her lap. Cobb said she squalled about the loudest and longest he'd ever heard, and jumped about four feet up in the air. Cobb then ran and jumped into a nearby ditch to observe what would happen next, and it wasn't long before they saw the Black woman bust out of the back door and run across a cotton field with a trail of children behind. Cobb said she was as wide as three rows of cotton, but fast and agile. She outran all the young'uns. ~ Frazier Glenn Miller

I just have to live my truth and know that it's okay to rock on my own vibration, because I'm me. I try to stand by that code, especially as a young Black woman in this industry. I try to walk the walk and talk the talk. ~ V. Bozeman

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much" ... No woman has ever written enough. ~ Bell Hooks

I am convinced that the Black man will only reach his full potential when he learns to draw upon the strengths and insights of the Black woman. ~ Manning Marable

Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else. ~ Richard Masur

Take for example job applications. In the 21st century the decision wherever to hire somebody for a job while increasingly be made by algorithms. We cannot rely on the machines to set the relevant ethical standards, humans will still need to do that, but once we decide on an ethical standard in the job market, that it is wrong to discriminate against blacks or against women for example, we can rely on machines to implement and maintain these standards better than humans. A human manager may know and even agree that is unethical to discriminate against blacks and women but then when a black woman applies for a job the manager subconsciously discriminate against her and decides not to hire her. If we allow a computer to evaluate job applications and program computers to completely ignore race and gender we can be certain that the computer will indeed ignore these factors because computers do not have a subconscious. Of course it won't be easy to write code for evaluating job applications and there is always the danger that the engineers will somehow program their own subconscious biases into the software, yet once we discover such mistakes it would probably be far easier to debug the software than to get rid humans of their racist and misogynist biases. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Was emotionally true because I had already grown to feel that there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will. I resolved that I would emulate the black woman if I were ever faced with a white mob; I would conceal a weapon, pretend that I had been crushed by the wrong done to one of my loved ones; then, just when they thought I had accepted their cruelty as the law of my life, I would let go with my gun and kill as many of them as possible before they killed me. The story of the woman's deception gave form and meaning to confused defensive feelings that had long been sleeping in me. My imaginings, of course, had no objective ~ Richard Wright

Black women were beautifully created at birth. We were blessed with melanin in our skin, which makes us Exquisitely Beautiful. From the lightest to the darkest skin tone, our melanin is Fiercely Poppin' on Purpose. There's no denying it, a Black woman's beauty is elegant! We are Black Queens... Uniquely perfect, flaws and all! ~ Stephanie Lahart

No woman on this whole earth can please me and cook for me and socialise and talk to me like my American black woman. ~ Muhammad Ali

You are a white. The Imperial Wizard. Now, if you don't think this is logic you can burn me on the fiery cross. This is the logic: You have the choice of spending fifteen years married to a woman, a black woman or a white woman. Fifteen years kissing and hugging and sleeping real close on hot nights. With a black, black woman or a white, white woman. The white woman is Kate Smith. And the black woman is Lena Horne. So you're not concerned with black or white anymore, are you? You are concerned with how cute or how pretty. Then let's really get basic and persecute ugly people! ~ Lenny Bruce

Black people don't know what white people are talking about when they talk about a Sister Souljah moment. I tell them it's the moment you meet a proud, beautiful black woman you can never forget. ~ Sister Souljah

I absolutely love what I do, and I want to dance for as long as I can and feel good about what I'm putting out there on the stage. But my goal has always been to be a principal dancer with ABT. Before I knew that there'd never been a black woman that was always my goal. I wanted to dance "Odette-Odile" and Kitri in "Don Quixote" and Aurora in "Sleeping Beauty." So that's still my goal. But knowing that it's never been done before I think makes me fight even harder. ~ Misty Copeland

If the Black woman is a queen, and I believe that she is, why would I settle for something less than royal? ~ Runoko Rashidi

you see, my whole life
is tied up
to unhappiness
it's father cooking breakfast
and me getting fat as a hog
or having no food
at all and father proving
his incompetence
again
i wish i knew how it would feel
to be free
it's having a job
they won't let you work
or no work at all
castrating me
(yes it happens to women too)

it's a sex object if you're pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you're fat
get back fat black woman be a mother
grandmother strong thing but not woman
gameswoman romantic woman love needer
man seeker dick eater sweat getter
fuck needing love seeking woman

it's a hole in your shoe
and buying lil sis a dress
and her saying you shouldn't
when you know
all too well that you shouldn't

but smiles are only something we give
to properly dressed social workers
not each other
only smiles of i know
your game sister
which isn't really
a smile

joy is finding a pregnant roach
and squashing it
not finding someone to hold
let go get off get back don't turn
me on you black dog
how dare you care
about me
you ain't go no good sense
cause i ain't shit you must be lower
than that to care

it's a filthy house
with yesterday's watermelon
and monday's tears
cause true ~ Nikki Giovanni

Black women who date or marry white men find that they cannot endure the harassment and persecution by black and white people. In some instances black men who are themselves involved in inter-racial relationships act contemptuously towards black women who exercise the same freedom of choice. They see their own behavior as acceptable because they view white women as victims, while they see white men as oppressors. So in their eyes a black woman involved with a white man is allying herself with a racist oppressor. But their tendency to see white women as innocent, as non-racist is yet another reflection of their acceptance of sexist idealization of woman. For white women have historically shown themselves to be as capable of being racist oppressors as white men. ~ Bell Hooks

I wish I could be the black woman Soderbergh, and put the camera on my shoulder and shoot beautifully while I directed. ~ Ava DuVernay

Listen ladies, we were not born to be a man's play thing. We were not born to serve men... We are not less than or inferior to men. We are life. We give life. We nurture life. I don't understand how that's not a big deal but it should be a big deal. It's a great deal actually. We endure a hell of a lot of pain to keep the cycle of life going. Being treated less than essential, less than precious should not be tolerated. In fact, I don't even understand how it's allowed and normalized. ~ Scarlet Jei Saoirse

There is a big risk for the Republicans in a race, especially with Hillary Clinton as a likely Democratic nominee in a contest that will focus on the possibility of the first woman president to be six months suspending up the nomination of a black woman, who is imminently qualified. ~ Barack Obama

Dear Black Women… Save, Invest, and Spend Less. Save because you just never know what will come up. This will save you from having to borrow from friends, family, or going to get a payday loan. Invest so that you'll have something of value to show for. Investing also helps in building WEALTH. Spend less so that you're not broke, living paycheck to paycheck, and/or in a lot of debt. Don't allow money to control you. Take charge! Keep, and/or get your finances in order. Value your money and be mindful of how and what you're spending. ~ Stephanie Lahart

Somebody will be upset and say I got rich and deserted my female people; No offense, but the only black woman I ever loved is my mama ~ Taye Diggs

I'm a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I'm dark skinned. I'm quirky. I'm shy. I'm strong. I'm guarded. I'm weak at times. I'm sensual. I'm not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black. ~ Viola Davis

Here I am, the artist, the person, the black woman, and the stereotype. I'm using myself and it has nothing to do with my muses or other women. It has to do with me. You see parts of my body moving, very collage like, flashing, and not speaking, just laying on a couch, looking out at the viewer. ~ Mickalene Thomas

As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. ~ Angela Davis

Personally, especially as a young black woman, I didn't think that Los Angeles was a place for me to start. There's a certain type that they go for or don't. ~ Condola Rashad

These forms of criticism that make black women the privileged readers of a black woman writer go against Hurston's own grain. She saw things otherwise: "When I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue. . . . the cosmic Zora emerges. . . . How can anybody deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me!" This is exactly right. No one should deny themselves the pleasure of Zora - of whatever color or background or gender. ~ Zadie Smith

True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself. ~ Toni Morrison

Like most of my peers, I was socialized into accepting America's subtle racial hierarchy and was never expected to challenge it. But as a black woman, I was also socialized to not challenge sexism or misogyny. ~ Elexus Jionde

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable. ~ Issa Rae

Perhaps ... I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself
a Black woman warrior poet doing my work
come to ask you, are you doing yours? ~ Audre Lorde

The men know that black women are women at the very least; magical at their zenith and biblical at the core, being with a black woman was as sacred as dousing oneself in holy water. That ~ Bernice L. McFadden

I can be standing in Barneys with my coat and purse and my selections, and some white woman will say, 'Can you get this in my size?' What she sees is a black woman, and her service button goes off. ~ Bell Hooks

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

If you see a black woman with an overweight white man, you know she got effed up credit! ~ Chris Rock

Honest to God, I hadn't meant to start a bar fight.
"So. You're the famous Jordan Amador." The demon sitting in front of me looked like someone filled a pig bladder with rotten cottage cheese. He overflowed the bar stool with his gelatinous stomach, just barely contained by a white dress shirt and an oversized leather jacket. Acid-washed jeans clung to his stumpy legs and his boots were at least twice the size of mine. His beady black eyes started at my ankles and dragged upward, past my dark jeans, across my black turtleneck sweater, and over the grey duster around me that was two sizes too big.
He finally met my gaze and snorted before continuing. "I was expecting something different. Certainly not a black girl. What's with the name, girlie?"
I shrugged. "My mother was a religious woman."
"Clearly," the demon said, tucking a fat cigar in one corner of his mouth. He stood up and walked over to the pool table beside him where he and five of his lackeys had gathered. Each of them was over six feet tall and were all muscle where he was all fat.
"I could start to examine the literary significance of your name, or I could ask what the hell you're doing in my bar," he said after knocking one of the balls into the left corner pocket.
"Just here to ask a question, that's all. I don't want trouble."
Again, he snorted, but this time smoke shot from his nostrils, which made him look like an albino dragon. "My ass you don't. This place is for fallen ~ Kyoko M.

Roland G. Fryer Jr., while discussing his names research on a radio show, took a call from a black woman who was upset with the name just given to her baby niece. It was pronounced shuh-TEED but was in fact spelled "Shithead. ~ Anonymous

The twenty-first-century successful black woman is brilliant and tenacious and not afraid to flex her intellectual, spiritual, or financial muscles. She has accomplished, earned, and owned more than black women of any other generation in American history. ~ Sophia Nelson

I laughed. "What the hell are you learning from Ebony?" "How to be a strong black woman?" I ~ Adrianne Brooks

You just have to be strong if you're a black woman. ~ Melissa Harris-Perry

To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther. ~ Tupac Shakur

Now that you find yourself here, what are you going to do? ~ Malebo Sephodi

I definitely am drawn to strong females who are successful, smart women because I am a woman like that. I think it's important to portray those kinds of women on film and television. Especially as a black woman, I think it's important. ~ Megalyn Echikunwoke

Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus - and at the very same time - that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies. ~ Rebecca Skloot

There are more than 100 million African women who go topless at some point in the day, each and every day, to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a country like America where nothing is hated more than the image of the black woman, even by black people'because her womb produces the black man and makes us black'I find it of grave importance to implement African images, and especially to produce media images that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black women. ~ Kola Boof

I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people. ~ Maya Angelou

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn't the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn't possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a lia ~ Zoe Leonard

How could anyone mistake Mom for white? Mom was a proud black woman, the proudest I knew. She hated us having to take welfare food, hated accepting anything we needed but did not earn. We had a picture of Marcus Garvey on the living-room wall, talking about going back to Africa, talking about the power of blackness and the strength of the Negro heart. I couldn't imagine looking at Mom and not seeing that. ~ Ilyasah Shabazz

Should a black woman carrying her "madam's" white baby travel in the "whites only" or the "nonwhites" section of the train? Or would a Japanese visitor who used a "whites only" public toilet be breaking the law? Or what was a bus conductor to do when he ordered a brown-skinned passanger to get off a whites-only bus and the passanger refused, insisting that he was a white man with a deep suntan? ~ John Carlin

There seems to be an unwritten rule, hurtful and at odds with the realities of American culture. It says you aren't supposed to wonder whether as a Black person, a Black woman, you really might be inferior––not quite bright enough, not quite quick enough to do the things you want to do. Though, of course, you do wonder. You're supposed to know you're as good as anyone. And if you don't know, you aren't supposed to admit it. If anyone near you admits it, you're supposed to reassure them quickly so they'll shut up. That sort of talk is embarrassing. Act tough and confident and don't talk about your doubts. If you never deal with them, you may never get rid of them, but no matter. Fake everyone out. Even yourself. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I'm not angry. And I don't like the thing of the 'angry black woman,' either. ~ Naomi Campbell

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. ~ Bertice Berry

There's competition among women everywhere you go. But back home, we understand that you can look like a variety of things and still be from the same culture. What I'm saying is that I've never felt like I was a light-skinned black woman. Never felt that way because we shared the same culture back home. ~ Grace Gealey

Am I going crazy? Am I supposed to believe that God is a big black woman with a questionable sense of humor? ~ William Paul Young

As an actress, I have put myself out there as an independent black woman, a single mom, a go-getter, a hustler who isn't afraid to survive. ~ LisaRaye McCoy-Misick

But today when people talk about the history of Hopkins's relationship with the black community, the story many of them hold up as the worst offense is that of Henrietta Lacks - a black woman whose body, they say, was exploited by white scientists. ~ Rebecca Skloot

I've often thought that being a light-skinned black woman is like being a well-dressed person who is also homeless. You may be able to pass in mainstream society, appearing acceptable to others, even desired. But in reality you have nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe. Even while you're out in public, feeling fine and free, inside you cannot shake the feeling of rootlessness. Others may even envy you, but this masks the fact that at night, there is nowhere safe for you, no place to call your own. ~ Zinzi Clemmons

The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl ... ~ Abigail Padgett