I really don't think there's any difference between what black audiences find funny and what white audiences find funny, but everyone likes to see themselves onscreen, so there are some instances where there's a black audience laughing at something that a white audience wouldn't laugh at because a black audience is really just happy to see itself.

Chris Rock

Chris Rock on Racial Differences in Comedy

February 15, 2015

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, 2014

When you look at the history of black sitcoms, they're all predicated upon the, quote, "black experience." And therefore, much of the humor is predicated on being black.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

Race is such a strange construct because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I want the public to understand what’s going on, and the sacrifices, when you see a female comic, she has made many more sacrifices, I feel, than a lot of men have.

Loni Love

But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance.

President Barack Obama

But I think finally TV and film are catching up with the diversity that is the global community and the fact that people want to see themselves reflected on TV.

Gabrielle Union

First off, I’d like to thank God that lives in us all. Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform “Glory” on the same bridge that Dr. King and the people of the civil rights movement marched on 50 years ago. This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation, but now is a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status. The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South side of Chicago, dreaming of a better life to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy. This bridge was built on hope. Welded with compassion. And elevated by love for all human beings.

Common

I think that one is not burdened by America's terrible racial history, and I think when people say to me, 'You're different. You're not angry,' in some ways it also feels that I'm being made complicit for something that I don't want to be complicit in. Because in some ways they're saying, 'You're one of the good ones.' And I think to say that is to somehow ignore the reality of American history. So for example, people will say, 'Oh, you're so easy to get along with.' And they'll tell me some story of some African-American woman they knew who just wasn't like me. Which I find quite absurd.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I'm interested in living in a post-racist world, where being African American doesn't dictate limitations on what I can do – but I don't want to live post-race. Our differences are so fascinating and wonderful. We don't want to all be the same. Who wants that? Hitler did, but who else?

Kerry Washington

So, just as "The Jeffersons" or "Good Times" or Tyler Perry cannot represent all black people, neither can the Huxtables.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I bring something to the table as a woman; I bring something to the table as a woman of color. So I feel like, if it’s the only thing you focus on, then it’s a danger, and if you never talk about it then it’s a danger.

Kerry Washington

We need more LGBT representation in the media. We need more LGBT characters and more LGBT storytelling. We need more diverse LGBT representations. And by that, I mean lots of different kinds of LGBT people living all different kinds of lives. And this is big—we need more employment of LGBT people in front of and behind the camera.

Kerry Washington

As much as we like to think we're liberals, society has this underlying bed of racism. It's like this thing I keep hearing about my 'entourage.' If Michael J. Fox walks into a restaurant with his friends, it's Michael J. Fox and his guests. When Eddie Murphy walks into a room with his friends, it's like, 'Oh, my, it's Eddie Murphy—and his entourage.'

Eddie Murphy

In the last two years, we've made greater strides than we ever have in the past toward becoming a more diverse and inclusive organization through admitting new members and more inclusive classes of members. And, personally, I would love to see and look forward to see a greater cultural diversity among all our nominees in all of our categories.

Cheryl Boone Isaacs

I've tried to explain to a lot of interviewers that Celie has nothing to do with the black experience. It's like, they were saying Celie is black and you are black and so you have all these things in common. Celie could be Oriental, Puerto Rican, and these same specific things could have happened to her.

Whoopi Goldberg

To be an African American in a play where you’re talking about race and identity and you are not the center of that conversation as an African American is a brand new thing.

Karen Pittman

My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough.

Zendaya Coleman

It is just amazing to me that black people are not angrier than they are.

Alfre Woodard

The industry believes that the only thing they can sell is segregation and the victimization of black people. But I think because of television, maybe that might change.

Joe Morton

So I always encourage people to, if they want to really work on getting into this business, to be writers first. Don't worry about being an actor first, be a writer. Create something. Own it and then you, you know, the world is yours. You can really dictate the terms of how that will happen and that's only going to happen because unique, creative, interesting voices and stories are coming up, you know. Don't try to run down the same lane that people have done before, you know.

Don Cheadle

And I'm the only one who has made ghetto movies that are classy, and that inform upon what people are going through. My films are not just excuses to make a rap soundtrack. And they’re not these chitlin’ movies either.

John Singleton

And there are almost no black women in film. You can go to whole movies and not see one black woman. They'll throw a black guy a bone. OK, here's a black guy. But is there a single black woman in Interstellar? Or Gone Girl? Birdman? The Purge? Neighbors? I'm not sure there are. I don't remember them. I go to the movies almost every week, and I can go a month and not see a black woman having an actual speaking part in a movie. That's the truth.

Chris Rock

I remember when Black-ish came out so many people were terrified of what it might be, simply cause the title was Black-ish. And it turned out to be brilliant and part of this movement.

Malcolm Spellman

So there’s a way of talking about race and it seems to me that the outcome is that everybody remain comfortable, which I also think is very dangerous.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I love black people but I do not love black historical dramas.

Ava DuVernay

We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.

Toni Morrison

I feel that African-Americans in any story are defined too often as housekeepers and facilitators.

Viola Davis

I think I’m somewhat defined by my race for sure, and I’m good with that and I actually want that to be a part. … I think that should be fodder for our work — we should use all aspects of ourselves. I’m always trying to find a place where that’s actually an impact on what I’m doing as opposed to going, 'Well, we’re all just people and we’re the same.'

Don Cheadle

It's not black and white anymore, and that's how it should be.

F. Gary Gray

Our humanity should be displayed on a much broader panel, on a much broader platform.

Bill Duke

So I always encourage people to, if they want to really work on getting into this business, to be writers first. Don't worry about being an actor first, be a writer. Create something. Own it and then you, you know, the world is yours. You can really dictate the terms of how that will happen and that's only going to happen because unique, creative, interesting voices and stories are coming up, you know. Don't try to run down the same lane that people have done before, you know.

Don Cheadle

The black artist cannot live in a revisionist place. The black artist can only tell the truth about humanity, and humanity is messy. People are messy. Caucasian actors know that.

Viola Davis

I was in Tucson, at a writer's conference, and I challenged my host to pull out his dictionary and look up the words "white" and "black." And he looked up the word white, and he came up with things like white, unmarked by malignant influence, of desirable condition, a sterling man, a bright, fair and honest. Then you look up the word black, and you get a villain, marked by malignant influence, unqualified, violator of laws, etc. And these are actual definitions in a Webster's dictionary. So this is a part of the linguistic environment, so that when white America looks at a black, they see the opposite of everything that they are.

August Wilson

And they said, well, if you're going to be a star, people aren't asking for you, they're asking for this image of you. And so that's kind of what, you know, was done. They began to transform me into an image.

Donna Summer

I'm not the kind of a guy that wants to generalize and say that you can't do this if you're black or you can't do that if you're white.

Ray Charles

Because I think that often the conversation about race in this country becomes reduced to slavery and I don’t think that’s just what it’s about.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Well, those who have turned against him, it's because they're ignorant or it doesn't serve their own interest, which probably has to do with money.

Stevie Wonder

It's so rare that you get to see a black man be something other than in control of his emotions.

Gregory Hines

Probably the most sexist decisions that get made about my career are decisions I don’t even know about, because — and I think it’s the same issue with race — we don’t even know when decisions are made that are discriminating, because we don’t even have access to hear when that happens.

Kerry Washington

Some black filmmakers will say, 'I don't want to be considered a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker.' I don't think that. I'm a black woman filmmaker.

Ava DuVernay

Create your own show. Get on YouTube. Do what you did. The door is open now, but quit trying to go viral, just do what you do.

Sinbad

Stay on it, stay strong on your path. Many will say no, and that’s okay cause all it takes is that one yes. After that it will all start happening. You can’t give up. Don’t compare your acting life with others. We all mature as actors on different times and levels. Go after your dreams with all you’ve got and then some, because success is waiting for YOU, just around the corner.

Anthony Anderson

It’s always wonderful to go to the theater and turn on the TV and see a bunch of faces that look like yours, and to kind of rejoice and celebrate that. But at the same time, it would be really great if we didn’t have to celebrate that, if this were the case just on a regular basis and that this was status quo. And it isn’t.

Taye Diggs

It’s like whenever something tragic happens, it seems that we always seem to do the same thing over again. Because we are not recognizing the continuum and building on the tactics. The systemic racism, the terrorism has grown and morphed and modernized, but our reaction to it is the same.

Ava DuVernay

Real black people are hardly ever represented in American cinema and television.

Alfre Woodard

It becomes almost allegorical in nature. I don’t want to be an allegory. I feel the most revolutionary thing I can do is create narratives where you see a fully realised human being.

Viola Davis

Because here’s the thing -- the road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me. Because while we’ve come so far, the truth is that those age-old problems are stubborn and they haven’t fully gone away.

First Lady Michelle Obama

If you have the ability to do something, you should do it.

Ava DuVernay

And the only other thing I’ll say is, we love it when our role models look like us. But if I had been waiting for a black, female Soviet specialist role model, I’d be still waiting.

Condoleezza Rice

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

Chris Rock

I’m all about not having race as a factor. To me, it should just be about the best actor for the part. Who cares if the lead is an Asian male? If this is the best actor for that role, why does the role have to be indicative of a person’s ethnicity?

Octavia Spencer

Women want to be fearless and sometimes all it takes is to see that it’s possible. Once you see it can be done, you think “I could do it, too.”

Rihanna

The pickings are slim and that makes it really hard for us as Black women, and in general. It’s tough for us. We ultimately get competitive ’cause it’s only two parts, and we’re all competing for those two parts.

Rutina Wesley

But it's worth the fight because we have to get more stories out there and put people of color in every genre so that it becomes normal.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

I think it's important for both the community but also the world to see people of color in all genres, especially love stories.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

I'm the kind of guy who, if somebody says, 'There's no way to make this funny,' I want to prove that wrong. I believe that with the right nuance, with the right touch, you can emphasize the funniness in anything.

Jordan Peele

I think diversity is something that should be celebrated because it’s who we are as a world, and little kids need to be able to turn on the TV and see real-world representations of themselves. It’s very important. You need that representation.

Octavia Spencer

Why would race have anything to do with it? Put your mind to what you want to do and go for that. It’s kind of like religion to me. It’s a good excuse for not getting there.

Morgan Freeman

I wasn't interested in making a white-savior movie; I was interested in making a movie centered on the people of Selma.

Ava DuVernay

It's so refreshing to see yourself on-screen, and to see yourself in the way that you actually live your life.

Darlene Donloe

Show business is not driven by art, it’s driven by commerce...

Chi McBride

In so many earlier books by African-American writers, particularly the men, I felt that they were not writing to me. But what interested me was the African-American experience throughout whichever time I spoke of. It was always about African-American culture and people — good, bad, indifferent, whatever — but that was, for me, the universe.

Toni Morrison

I don't feed into the race game. I don't give it that much thought. I never have and never will.

Kevin Hart

If, in fact, I have, in some way, been the inspiration for any of them, I will feel that I have accomplished what I set out to do, and that is to break the mold and the concept that limited people’s vision of what we, as black women, or black actresses, could do in this business.

Cicely Tyson

So I was the third girl out, but I had a master’s in fine arts when I went to New York and started, so.

Loretta Devine

There's nothing but comedies, and I'm tired of all these black men in dresses. Every other movie has a black man in a dress, from the Madea movies to Norbit to Big Momma. How come nobody's protesting that?

John Singleton

It has always been my mission to get people to understand that we are also human, that we are human beings with all the nuts and bolts of being human.

Cicely Tyson

Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man, and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.

Morgan Freeman

Every little black child grew up seeing that getting along with white people meant grinning and acting clowns. It helped white people to feel easy about what they had done, and were doing, to Negroes, and that's carried right on over to now.

Miles Davis

We as African-American artists are more concerned with image and message and not execution which is why every time you see your images they’ve been watered down to the point where they are not realistic at all.

Viola Davis

I don't think of myself as a lady humorist. I just have boobs and parts that allow me to give birth to children, but I like to be funny with the boys and the girls.

Maya Rudolph

But I think in due time, America will get tired of them and will go back to a different format as far as television.

Ving Rhames

It's always about us crossing over. You never hear about it going the other way.

Kevin Hart

I don’t really do TV.

Kerry Washington

This is a business where, if you’re looking for consistency and dependability in your work, this is not the career for you.

Kerry Washington

I think in a lot of our films there's a romanticizing of slavery. If you look at 'Gone With The Wind' it was the good old days of slavery when everyone got along, which is, you know, not how it really went down.

Kerry Washington

That pain is how you know you’re doing it right. Put your art first and expand your definition of self. Learn as much as you can in your craft. It’s all about the craft, craft, craft, craft, craft.

Ryan Michelle Bathe