My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a strong sense of self-awareness and pride in one's identity as a black woman.
Lena Horne's statement reflects her journey towards embracing her identity as a black woman, highlighting the importance of self-acceptance and recognition in a broader societal context. It underscores the significance of acknowledging and celebrating oneβs heritage and the strength that comes from embracing one's true self.
In practice
In a speech about diversity and inclusion, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of embracing one's identity.
It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what's positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.
I'm not alone, I'm free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody.
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
I'm still learning, you know. At 80, I feel there is a lot I don't know.
In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.
I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
I don't know what I am if I'm not a woman.
To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am.
When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people then you are making a statement and the statement is clear
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