People Of Color Quotes

There's an inexplicable joy that exists on a brown child's face and in the way they navigate their world long before they discover they're hated.

~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Your beauty will be in shades of melanin and light.

~ R. Y.s. Perez

The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible-that is precisely why they are so precious.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

My family is like America, we are a blend of melanin and uncertain borders.

~ R. Y.s. Perez

Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored.

~ Neil Gaiman

Labelling is no longer a liberating political act but a necessity in order to gain entrance into the academic industrial complex and other discussions and spaces. For example, if so called “radical” or “progressive” people don’t hear enough “buzz” words (like feminist, anti-oppression, anti-racist, social justice, etc.) in your introduction, then you are deemed unworthy and not knowledgeable enough to speak with authority on issues that you have lived experience with. The criteria for identifying as a feminist by academic institutions, peer reviewed journals, national bodies, conferences, and other knowledge gatekeepers is very exclusive. It is based on academic theory instead of based on lived experiences or values. Name-dropping is so elitist! You're not a real feminist unless you can quote, or have read the following white women: (insert Women's Studies 101 readings).

~ Krysta Williams

You do not give your precious body to the billy clubs of Birmingham sheriffs, nor to the insidious activity of the streets.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

To be a good writer, become a good listener.

~ Cynthia Briggs

Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things—erased, and yet without us—we are essential.

~ Junot Díaz

It's a scary world we live in when a person of color endorses a racist for president.

~ Dashanne Stokes