Anita Baker Quotes

As a black person, I'm used to going to places in which I might be the only black person that shows up there. This experience has an effect on the way you see yourself in the world and what it means to be black in the world.

The black experience for me has been very interesting. Some days, I wake up, and I feel really black. Some days, I'm like, 'This is me. I'm black. Black Lives Matter. Black pride. Look at my cocoa skin.' I just feel it's my being.

I stand on the black side of issues, philosophically, politically, socially, and for me to not check that box, I felt like, would be some sort of betrayal of not only who I am but also the community I affiliate with.

I never had a moment of realization about my blackness - I just was. Blackness was a central thread of my experience as a child and as an adolescent, as it is now that I'm an adult.

Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.

My son don't have to say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. He don't have to be called those crazy names.

I never really had to put much thought into my race, and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color, and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.

Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.

I've never been one to carry race on my sleeve, and I've never been one to really use my race.

I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.

The perception of linked fate and that feeling of being always on the spot as a representative of the race, at least in mixed company, are features of African American life that predate affirmative action and arise outside of its presence.

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

I'm black, and it's a very important part of what I am. I'm not embarrassed about it.

Sammy was the only one that looked like me, so I naturally gravitated to him. Sammy made it cool to be black at a time when, let's just say it, it wasn't very cool to be black. His name was on the front of the building in lights, and he had to go in the back. But you never saw him sweat.

White America's live under this accusation that they're racist, they need to prove that they're not racist. In order to prove that you're not racist, you need to take over the fate of black people and say, go with us, we'll engineer you into the future, we'll engineer you into equality.

I definitely am not white.

Being black has been put in such a negative light. For such a long time, being black has been criminalized, but being black is something that I should be proud of because we have so many black people who have accomplished so many amazing things in the world.

If you are born black, and you don't accept your natural status as a victim, then the validity of your blackness is immediately called into question.

Obviously, I'm not not black. But this is one thing I do know after years and years of working with a lot of black players and black commentators on many networks: That if you go to the place of you're telling a black man, or a black woman, that 'You should know your place and stay in it,' when you get to there, them's fighting words.

Our blackness and how to survive being black in America was something that our parents instilled in us extraordinarily well.

I identify as black.