40 Quotes Tagged: black

the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.

The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.

None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.

THE CONSCIOUS HUMAN

You are not just white,
but a rainbow of colors.
You are not just black,
but golden.
You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world.
You are not just for the right or left,
but for what is right over the wrong.
You are not just rich or poor,
but always wealthy in the mind and heart.
You are not perfect, but flawed.
You are flawed, but you are just.
You may just be conscious human,
but you are also a magnificent
reflection of God.

Suzy Kassem

“The Conscious Human” Poetry by Suzy Kassem

I have seen the absolute black; it was unspeakably beautiful.

You better shut your big blubber lips.”
We would call each other “jungle bunnies” and “bush boogies.” We would talk about each other’s ugly, big lips and flat noses. We would call each other pickaninnies and nappy-haired so-and-so’s.
“Act your age, not your color,” we would tell each other.
“You gon thank me when I’m through with you, Ima beat you so bad, I’m gon beat the black offa you.”
Black made any insult worse. When you called somebody a “bastard,” that was bad. But when you called somebody a “Black bastard,” now that was terrible. In fact, when i was growing up, being called “Black,” period, was grounds for fighting.
“Who you callin’ Black?” we would say. We had never heard the words “Black is beautiful” and the idea had never occurred to most of us.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

In sociology, we often refer to black people who are in the United States but who are not descendants of either the enslaved or, later, of those who experienced the Great Migration as “black ethnics.” It is a complicated term because it implies that black Americans do not have an ethnicity.

The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner’s debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil. Before there was a United States of America, there was enslavement. Theirs was a living death passed down for twelve generations.

So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz’s s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’
… ‘Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!’
Den dey all laughed real hard. But before Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz just like the rest.

You are not just white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not just black, but golden. You are not just a nationality,
but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

Everybody has a little bit of the sun and moon in them. Everybody has a little bit of man, woman, and animal in them. Darks and lights in them. Everyone is part of a connected cosmic system. Part earth and sea, wind and fire, with some salt and dust swimming in them. We have a universe within ourselves that mimics the universe outside. None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.

PART SUN AND MOON by Suzy Kassem

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.

"My inspiration for writing music is like Don McLean did when he did "American Pie" or "Vincent". Lorraine Hansberry with "A Raisin in the Sun". Like Shakespeare when he does his thing, like deep stories, raw human needs.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like, you've got the Vietnam War, and because you had reporters showing us pictures of the war at home, that's what made the war end, or that shit would have lasted longer. If no one knew what was going on we would have thought they were just dying valiantly in some beautiful way. But because we saw the horror, that's what made us stop the war.

So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick.

I've seen all of that — the crack babies, what we had to go through, losing everything, being poor, and getting beat down. All of that. Being the person I am, I said no no no no. I'm changing this."

The story of the hunt only favors the hunter, until the lion tells the truth!