You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn about white ancestry that probably involved forced sexual relations.
The idea of the museum is to show my work since the start, and I wanted to show all of it, not just to choose between different pieces. They are grouped together in themes - minimalism, androgyny, black and white, graphic, flowers, and so on - from the earliest designs to the most recent ones.
We have seen a lot of interest from Chinese developers on Google Play because the extent to which Android is used. If we can figure out a model by which we can serve those users, it would be a privilege to do so. So I don't think of China as a black hole.
This whole notion that all African-Americans are not going to vote for Obama is not necessarily true. I believe a third would vote for me, based on my own anecdotal feedback. Not vote for me because I'm black but because of my policies.
I remember plastering the kitchen with Black Power pictures of Angela Davis.
'Empire of Self' is a loving portrait of a very difficult man. Jay Parini, himself a gifted novelist, poet and biographer, has gone very deep into the 'black energy' of Gore Vidal's relentless narcissism and megalomania. Parini envisions an epic battle between Vidal's angelic and demonic sides, yet there's very little of the angel in Vidal.
In the end, so much of what I wanted to do was to have a body of work that exhaustively looked at black American notions of masculinity: how we look at black men - how they're perceived in public and private spaces - and to really examine that, going from every possible angle.
I'm not angry. And I don't like the thing of the 'angry black woman,' either.
It would be a tragic mistake for us out here to imagine that Bush represents the hearts and the minds of the majority of your countrymen. Many of your black and other compatriots must be just as anguished as we are.
Ethnically, Tuareg describe themselves as white. And they don't look Arab or black. Many Tuareg have light skin, light eyes and sharp angular noses and cheekbones. They are cousins of the Berbers of North Africa. Some legends say the Tuareg are the decedents of an ancient Roman legion that disappeared into the desert two millennia ago.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
Black women have always been these vixens, these animalistic erotic women. Why can't we just be the sexy American girl next door?
I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.
Once one understands that 'racial tensions' is a euphemism for a black animosity toward whites and a left-wing construct, one begins to understand why the election of a black president has had no impact on most blacks or on the left.
Since neither black animosity nor the Left's falsehood of 'racial tensions' is based on the actual behavior of the vast majority of white Americans, nothing white America could do will affect either many blacks' perceptions or the leftist libel.
I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
#BlackLivesMatter is about black pride and black power and standing up against a world that tries to annihilate us.
I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons.
From the day of its birth, the anomaly of slavery plagued a nation which asserted the equality of all men, and sought to derive powers of government from the consent of the governed. Within sound of the voices of those who said this lived more than half a million black slaves, forming nearly one-fifth of the population of a new nation.
Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.