Tracey > Tracey's Quotes

“Excuse me, but what kinda black lady are you?" I smiled, looked at her, and said, "The kinda black lady that you wanna know.”
― Rebecca Carroll, Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war. And until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war.”

- Popularized by Bob Marley in the song War”
― Haile Selassie I, Selected Speeches

“Strength, courage & wisdom...it's been inside of me all along...”
― India.Arie

“I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“But even though catastrophic oppression brought about a process of objectification and dehumanization, the absolute negation of humanity was not possible because a damaged human spirit seeks to resurrect and reconstruct itself; it also seeks self-consciousness.”
― Clovis E. Semmes, Cultural Hegemony and African American Development

“One of the most effective ways in which dominant groups maintain their power is by depriving the people they dominate of the knowledge of their own history.
Lacking an appreciation of their own historical experience and the dignity, even glory, of the actions of their own people, the colonized are encouraged to think that they have no alternative to oppressive conditions.”
― Jane Sherron De Hart, Women's America: Refocusing the Past

“It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background........Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me”
― Zora Neale Hurston