I think, when you grow up as a black person or an African in a black and African country, identity isn’t something you are particularly concerned about. I only became conscious of racial identity when I moved to the UK and started to understand the subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways in which this compounds the way you are seen and how you move through the world.

…partly because I’m perceived as black…the idea I could look at my mother and say to her that I’m not black makes no sense. To me, blackness is just part of what the family is.

Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds- social, economic, even ethnic- yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but did that mean that we had to think alike?

I was a little confused as a kid because I grew up with my mom, and my mom is black. So, I was cultured in a very 'black' way. But when I go to school, I'm getting called 'white.' They would look at me, and they would curse me out. I didn't understand. I just knew I saw people of all different shades, and I was light. Now, I'm in a much bigger world.

"Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on."

…Blackness for me is sort of like air, I’m constantly perceiving it, but not really thinking about it as my mind is on more immediate concerns. And then sometimes I’m forced into a hyper-awareness of it and that awareness is at times pleasant, at times noxious…

Being black in America has little to do with skin color. Being black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.

When I was born, I was colored. I soon became a Negro. Not long after that, I was Black. Most recently, I was African American. It seems we’re on a roll here. But I am still first and foremost in search of freedom.

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. The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American. This is my country. My people helped to build it and we've been here for centuries. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything.

Being black means being layered, carrying a beautiful lineage and even though, the world makes it tough, being proud of who you are.

I grew up with my mother, so I consider myself black. I met my dad when he passed away but I never got to know anything white about me

I was 'colored' until I was 14, a Negro until I was 21 and a black man ever since.

In America, black is beautiful. To be black is to be more righteous, nobler; carry the heaviest historic baggage — heavier than the Holocaust — and be encouraged to perpetually and publicly pick at those suppurating sores. To be black is to have an unwritten, implicit social contract with wider, whiter society. To be black it to be born with an IOY (I Own You); it is to be owed apologies, obsequiousness, education, and auto-exculpation for any wrongdoing.