Ziwe Fumudoh Quotes

All of this resulted in my classmates laughing at me, which, thanks to what my therapist describes as habitual disassociation, I did not process in real time.

We are wiser to the fact that having a black friend is not a defense against accusations of racism, just like having a black child does not absolve Thomas Jefferson from being a fugly hater.

I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who also happens to be conscious. Since birth, every commercial, every magazine, every piece of media I have encountered has socialized me to hate every body part.

If my career is a living testament of anything, let it be that one opportunity is not enough. It is a series of cracked-open windows and doors that have gotten me into a position of what I would describe as fleeting power. We need as many opportunities as possible. To fail, to be bad, and then to eventually succeed.

Toni Morrison once said that racism was a distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being, wasting your time proving to others what you know to be true.

If you are wondering what gives me the unique qualifications to write about the complex subject of race in America, the answer is: vibes.

I suppose the idea behind the “Some of my best friends are black” defense is that you cannot be prejudiced if you choose to interact with different racial backgrounds. It suggests that any association with black people is a form of activism when it in fact is the bare minimum of living in a society that includes black people.

Why don’t my parents have normal rules? Why don’t they eat normal food? Why don’t they wear normal clothes? Why can’t they just be normal? These questions are xenophobic. It took me a long time to be proud of where I came from.

Racists do not get to decide whether or not their actions are racist. It is the rest of us who are subject to their outbursts who can stand back and connect the dots.

While I am marginalized in my own right, it is important to acknowledge my complicity in the occupation of stolen land.

I had the distinct understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the world: It was mid at best. No power. No credit. No rights. Just a lot of people being mad at you for not being perfect when perfection was a moving goalpost. I was just supposed to accept that that was the way the world operated.

I do not exist just to move plot. While I am a supportive friend, I am not a supporting character. I am the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story.

My art is not about success. My art is about me—my life, my experiences, my perspective. That is my cheat code. I remind myself that I am one of a kind. I am special. I have something to say. And even if no one cares, I do. The only way I could be an imposter is if I’m not true to myself.

Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

The problem is that people who are suffering do not get paid in thoughts and prayers. If you really want to effect actual change, you have to look into your arsenal of talents that you can sustain longer than a social media day. Can you sing? Can you write? Can you build a cabinet? Are you good at organizing networks of people? Are you charismatic and convincing enough to effectively phonebank for underfunded candidates? Are you a social recluse with deep pockets that can fund charitable organizations? Are you bad at everything?

external validation is a bottomless pit—there’s no amount that’ll make you feel whole if you do not love yourself.

The truth is, I create art to heal my inner child—the young girl who did not have the words to explain the world herself.

I also have a beautiful heart under two moderately sized breasts.

After years of no one caring about my work, a valuable lesson I learned from rejection is that I cannot live my life for external validation. This seems contradictory, because most artwork directly prompts the validation of applause or laughter or furrowed brows and nodding heads. But external validation is a bottomless pit—there’s no amount that’ll make you feel whole if you do not love yourself. So I resolved, much later than I would have liked to, to create to entertain myself.