If I were not a black artist but I was still singing, playing guitar, and singing ballads that are spiritual and cerebral, I'd be easier to market because people accept that from white female singer-songwriters faster.
I remember that my mother used to take me to see ballets, especially if there were black people in them.
At the end of all this, Russia held in her hands a vast belt of land running from the Baltic sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, comprising eleven nations with a population of 100 million people.
To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world.
Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.
My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.
After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band.
When I write a team book, it's all about how they relate to each other and what they bring to the team and the book. Whether it's Black Canary and Huntress or Bane and Scandal, I look for a relationship that people can believe in, that they want to follow and learn more about.
I've seen children's eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang.
The black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime.
Bangkok is one of those places where it's so rich and full of tradition, but they're so open to different people - different gender expressions and gender identities. As a gay man, I never once felt uncomfortable there. As a black man, I never once felt uncomfortable.
I now realize that I am a gay man before anything else. Other gays may think they're a Jew first, or black, or a banker, but I'm gay.
Black lives matter, as a subset of all lives matter. So any injustices to a particular group must be addressed specific to that group but under the banner that all life is created in the image of God.
I'm comfortably asocial - a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.
If you're looking for the safe choice, you shouldn't be supporting a black guy named Barack Obama to be the next leader of the free world.
The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.
Barack Obama's administration responded to the Haitian crisis within 24 hours. Here comes the soldiers, here comes the food, go go go... Rush Limbaugh told his multi-millions of listeners that Obama only did that to gain favour with black people in America. This is the kind of idiocy that I have to deal with in my country.
Barbara and I wanted to do a television special, and she put it together with T Bone Burnett, and they came up with the idea of it being black and white. It was fabulous; we had a great time. It was wonderful.
I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.
Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.
