For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, pat...
I am thrilled to return as Honorary Captain of the GREEKs for HBCUs Team. I reflect fondly on my days at Florida A&M University, and how visible and active all of the sororities and fraternities were. Membership in Black Greek letter organizations on...
At first, my bedroom had flowers and yellow walls and huge furniture in plastic that was orange and green - and furry green bed cover and everything. Then, I think the day I turned 13, I painted the walls black and put Kurt Cobain on the wall and jus...
I imagined the sound of whips on black backs and the roar of the overseer over the cry of mothers being separated from their babies. I pulled on all the strength I had not to shot out every valuable leaded pane of glass in that stinking house.
I did some pretty crazy stuff that I never thought I would do, for the sake of a movie, like surfing in eight-foot waves in pitch-black darkness, where I can't see anything. That still haunts me, kind of, in my nightmares, but it was worth it, it was...
I really like Wisconsin. I enjoy it. I enjoy the people. I enjoy the fact that it's not L.A. or New York. And there's some sense of normalcy here - people having children in homes they can somewhat afford to live in.
She was a pretty girl, with a pointed face and blue-black hair. But she was an untidy, a dusty sort of girl, and you felt that in a few years something might go wrong; she might get swollen ankles or grow a mustache.
Ever since Pele's extraordinary talents blessed the world of football, black footballers have been accepted in the pantheon of the greats. But to achieve commercial recognition is somewhat different: it requires a form of adulation that also spells i...
I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally.
In between 15 and 20 - probably at around 17 - my interests switched from hard rock to punk rock. And then by 20 they were circling out of punk rock back into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the stuff that I didn't get to when I was younger.
I met a 13-year-old black child, Raymond, who had never been to school and had never learnt any words, yet it seemed to me that he was intelligent. It became apparent after a short period that Raymond thought in terms of visual signs and movements.
I not only loved studying theater, I loved being a theater major. It gave me an excuse to brood, to grow a beard, to wear black 'at' people. I didn't just want to play Hamlet, I wanted to be Hamlet.
Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those ...
As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever i...
My first reaction on being awarded the Nobel Prize was, actually, I thought of Fischer Black, my colleague. He unfortunately had passed away. And there was no doubt in my mind that if he were still alive, he would have been a co-recipient of the Nobe...
I remember as a young man seeing these bigger-than-life, strong images of black manhood in the form of Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, Jim Kelly, Billy Dee Williams. All these guys were these alpha males who were smart, attractive. I said, 'Wow, I wan...
If it's lawful to have a rifle club to kill pheasants, it should be just as lawful to have one to kill wolves or dogs that are being sicked on little black babies. In fact, it's constitutional. Article Number Two of the constitution guarantees the ri...
It was a warm and natural feeling to be there. We were not black or white people. We were just people bound together by love and understanding. As I walked out of that church, I felt like I had rediscovered my inner peace.
The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided w...
I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's t...
As for facial hair, I think I decided it was a good look after graduate school. I always shave it myself and trim my own beard. I change the look depending on the role. For 'Million Dollar Baby,' I had no facial hair. For 'Men in Black 3,' I had no f...
