So when I got to be about 13 or 14 I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time which was Aerosmith Cheap Trick Black Sabbath AC/DC Ted Nugent and all that and that's just where I came from.
My parents were vegetarians. I'd show up at school this giant black kid with none of the cool clothes and a tofu sandwich and celery sticks.
I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
You don't have to be a certain thing to be cool. If you're white you don't have to act black or whatever. Just be you and know who you are.
Now I'm way into suits that I can put on whether I took a shower or not and wear barefoot and paint my toes black or whatever color the suit is. It's very cool to wear suits like that. Roll up the sleeves and just say yee-haw.
Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix lose our stuff and on occasion they crash producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard.
Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.
On the political front of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions you bring 10 women in then it's 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy the number of chairs can actually increase.
Any film I do is not going to change the way black women have been portrayed or black people have been portrayed in cinema since the days of D.W. Griffith.
As another has well said to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.
People would say you look weak if you're not cursing the opposition and driving around in a big black car while always wearing a tie. Above all to be 'strong' you're always supposed to be giving orders.
They put chains on me they chained my waist my legs. Put me in the back of a squad car and I literally blacked out. I didn't even - there's whole pieces missing.
Because I'm a young black man driving a really nice expensive car I sometimes get harassed when I'm rolling through a ghetto neighbourhood.
It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming to a stop sign and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. It was magic. There was a sense of mystery.
In terms of the technology I use the most it's probably a tie between my Blackberry and my MacBook Pro laptop. That's how I communicate with the rest of the world and how I handle all the business I have to handle.
It's not hard to get your way when it's your way or the highway. People either follow suit or they're not around. I don't really like the sound of that 'cause that sounds like a temper tantrum. I'm just very black and white when it comes to my business. There's really no gray area.
White shall not neutralize the black nor good compensate bad in man absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.
Very few if any first-generation black or white or Asian kids will pursue a Ph.D. They'll pursue the professions for economic security. Many will go to law school and/or business school.
Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic ' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor ' it's crucial to say that.
You know it's going to hell when the best rapper out there is white and the best golfer is black.
There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!
My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility about beauty and how to make gumbo.
The pattern of a newspaperman's life is like the plot of 'Black Beauty.' Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings.