Paul Beatty Quotes

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in...

And if you think about it, pretty much everything that made the twentieth century bearable was invented in a California garage: the Apple computer, the Boogie Board, and gangster rap.

The bus here because they lost Rosa Parks's bus.Who lost Rosa Parks's bus?White people. Who the fuck else? Supposedly, every February when schoolkids visit the Rosa Parks Museum, or wherever the fuck...

In 7.81 square miles of vaunted black community, the 850 square feet of Dum Dum Donuts was the only place in the community where one could experience the Latin root of the word, where a citizen could...

Not surprisingly, there's nothing to do at the Pentagon except start a war. Tourist aren't even allowed to take photos with the building in the background, so when the sailor-suited family of Navy vet...

You either a poet or a homosexual. Oh, shit, that's fucked up. Why can't I be both?

At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how presidential the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over h...

Our teacher says we're supposed to be colorblind. That's hard to do if you can see color, isn't it?Yeah, I'd say so, but I think your teacher means don't make any assumptions based on color.Cross on t...

Objection! This defendant, evil genius that he is, has through his abhorrent actions managed to racially discriminate against every race all at the same time, to say nothing of his unabashed slavehold...

Man, didn't anybody ever tell you that art is propaganda? It doesn't matter whether you think it should be or it shouldn't be, it just is, and motherfucker, like or not, you're sitting on a funky Magn...

The only people discussing race with any insight and courage are loud middle-aged white men who romanticize the Kennedys and Motown, well-read open-minded white kids like the tie-dyed familiar sitting...

Founded in 1868, Dickens, like most California towns except for Irvine, which was established as a breeding ground for stupid, fat, ugly, white Republicans and the chihuahuas and East Asian refugees w...

When I reached the vestibule of my apartment building, the campus police closed in on me. I heard Professor Edelstein shout, it's okay, he's a poet. Matter of fact, the best black ... the best poet wr...

In neighborhoods like the oneI grew up in, places that are poor in proxy but rich in rhetoric, the hollies have a saying - I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.

I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us from the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent.

I sit in a thickly padded char that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks.

She was thinking about how her middle-school alma mater was now 75 percent Latino, when in her day it was 80 percent black. Thinking

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible, he says. Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and yo...

Hondas sound like cars designed by pacifists and humanitarian diplomats. The Accord, Civic, Insight.

Sometimes I'd chance across an elderly member of the community standing in the middle of the street, unable to cross the single white line. Puzzled looks on their faces from asking themselves why they...