Lee Daniels Quotes

The biggest accomplishment, in racial terms, for Barack Obama was being elected. He had to overcome his blackness to be elected. He climbed the Mt. Everest of American politics, becoming an historic first.

My books are not about how it feels to be a black man. My books are about how it feels to be a human being, and part of what I'm trying to sort out is what we mean - what I mean, what you mean, what everybody in the culture means - when they say 'black man,' or they say 'white person.'

For so long, black conservatives have not been able to have a voice; people who have bi-racial children, people in bi-racial relationships, it has been so black and white. I blame Obama. His eight years in office did a lot of damage in terms of race relations in this country.

If faux liberal white guys want to support and defend Obama, by all means please do so. But I would suggest they try to limit that support to matters of policy and not perspectives on race.

When Obama came to power, there was a lot of talk about a post-racial America.

Since I got to this country when I was 12, I've been obsessed with this idea of whiteness and blackness because I realized I was neither. For me, it was so important to me to make a film that focused on whiteness because you wouldn't have blackness if you didn't have whiteness.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid marveled at the electability of Barack Obama because, unlike previous black candidates, Mr. Obama was 'light-skinned' and lacked a 'Negro dialect.'

Obama has placed himself in perfect political position: he spent the 2008 campaign convincing the American people that he's a racial unifier rather than a divider, without any evidence to prove it.

The greatest hope most Americans - including Republicans - had when Barack Obama was elected president was that the election of a black person as the country's president would reduce, if not come close to eliminating, the racial tensions that have plagued America for generations.

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

The relationship of black Americans to Obama is sociologically riveting.

What after all am I. Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates black and white in America.

Part of Obama’s genius is a remarkable ability to soothe race consciousness among whites …

I'm fully conscious all the time that I'm an American Negro, because it's part of my life. But I also know that if I want to say, 'I see a bus full of people,' I don't have to say, 'I am a Negro seeing a bus full of people.'

Our vulnerability is that both blacks and whites can use our impossible racial authenticity against us. Both races can throw up our mixed background to challenge our authority to speak.

In '08, Barrack Obama was famously elected president. Even though I'd supported McCain and dreaded what I feared Barrack might do, I felt a surge of elation when the networks announced he'd won. I really hadn't thought the U.S. would go for an African-American for a decade or so.

Guess what, Beyonce? White people like your music, too. White people buy your songs on iTunes, memorize your lyrics, and admire your talent and beauty. Little white girls wanna be like you just as little black girls do, but instead of that, you'd rather perpetuate the great battle of the races.

I definitely feel like, in America, even though race is a social construct... there's still a line drawn in the sand; there still are sides. Politically, there's a black side and a white side, and I stand unapologetically on the black side.

When you're a black superhero, you can't erase the notion that you're black. If you're black, living in the community, and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean, you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.

I think unless we have an honest conversation about race and identity in this country, we're never going to get anywhere.

Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?

What I really hoped to do with my work was to at least be able to define my relationship to race.

I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.

I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.