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		History has proven that art depicting black people cannot be disentangled from the political implications that such art has on their lives. As Africans were being stripped from the continent and sailed across the Atlantic to the Western world, depictions of black people in Western art changed in order to further render them racialized caricatures.
	
	  Clint Smith Clint Smith
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		Black history is part of American history, and it should be treated as such.
	
	  Janelle Monae Janelle Monae
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		We have a generation of black actors playing leading roles on film and TV - Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor - which is great and is breaking the mould.
	
	  David Harewood David Harewood
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		Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos - novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes - you are beyond doubt the strangest?
	
	  Walker Percy Walker Percy
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		Vinod Khosla is best known for shunning convention and taking massive risks on companies he calls 'black swans' -companies with a near-complete chance of failure. But, if they succeed, the world will be forever changed.
	
	  Emily Chang Emily Chang
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		As a black woman who grows up in a predominantly white neighborhood, you learn how to perform a 'good' version of yourself. And then when you're with your home girls, you're saying all kinds of stuff that sounds all kinds of crazy, but you understand each other because you're speaking the way that you're comfortable with.
	
	  Katori Hall Katori Hall
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		The black community can be competitive and cautious when it comes to those we want put on display for the world to see and judge. We are a prideful people who believe that anything that will make us seem 'less than' should be hidden.
	
	  Karamo Brown Karamo Brown
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		I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.
	
	  Don Cheadle Don Cheadle
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		Deep at the dark bottom of the melting pot, where the private is public and the public private, where black is white and white black, where the immoral becomes moral and the moral is anything that makes one feel good (or that one has the power to sustain), the white man's relish is apt to be the black man's gall.
	
	  Ralph Ellison Ralph Ellison
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		She was wearing a purple T-shirt, with a skinny black dress over it that made you remember how much of a girl she was, and trashed black boots that made you forget.
	
	  Kami Garcia Kami Garcia
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		I feel like because black Cuban artists don't have the kind of pressure to thematize race in the way that African-American artists do, there's more space for them to do their art without having to discuss it in terms of racial identity.
	
	  Rachael Price Rachael Price
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		Fashion for my mother was about asserting and demonstrating you had aesthetics, tastes, sensibility, manners, beauty - qualities that black people were always trying to prove they possessed, because it was often assumed that we didn't.
	
	  Margo Jefferson Margo Jefferson
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		The Clintons use black people for votes but then don't do anything for black communities after they're elected. They use us for photo ops.
	
	  Alicia Garza Alicia Garza
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		Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation … Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.
	
	  Bernard Baruch Bernard Baruch
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		If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware there's a menace. That's costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.
	
	  Tony Kushner Tony Kushner
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		Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than quarks, quasars, big bangs and black holes.
	
	  Tom Stoppard Tom Stoppard
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		She smashes her knuckles into winter As autumn's wind fades into black She is the saint of all the sinners, the one whose fallen through the cracks... (iViva la Gloria!)
	
	  Billie Joe Armstrong
			
			
				Green Day Billie Joe Armstrong
			
			
				Green Day
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		I went into my own black-out period 1942-45 which lasted two or three years where the canvases would simply build up until they’d get like stone and it was always just a gray mess. The image wouldn’t emerge, but I worked pretty regularly. I was fighting to find I knew not what, but I could no longer stay with what I had.
	
	  Lee Krasner Lee Krasner
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		The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice.
	
	  Marion Barry Marion Barry
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		So much of my work is as Yara, not as a character. If you're attacking my work as a philanthropist or activist, you're attacking Yara. But because of "Black-ish" and this national audience we have, I get to have a larger or louder voice.
	
	  Yara Shahidi Yara Shahidi
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		After 27 years, I walked out of my first one a few months ago. Black Sheep with Chris Farley.
	
	  Gene Siskel Gene Siskel
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		The General has got the gout, and Mrs. Maitland the jaundice. Miss Debary, Susan, and Sally, all in black, but without any stature, made their appearance, and I was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow me.
	
	  Jane Austen Jane Austen