My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.

Black women have always been these vixens, these animalistic erotic women. Why can’t we just be the sexy American girl next door?

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.