Sidney Poitier: A Remembrance
Black Complexity, Black Survival
How we see ourselves, how we see each other,” she said, “should be determined by us and not by people who generally don’t like us; people who pass laws certifying us as less than human. Too many of us see each other as ‘they’ see us,” she continued. “Time for that shit to stop. We’re going to have to decide for ourselves what we are and what we’re not. Create our own image of ourselves. And nurture it and feed it till it can stand on its own.”
― Sidney Poitier, The Measure of a Man
“We should not limit it to two generations. I have to accept that my contribution to the man that I have become was a small one. The gift made to my mother, which manifested in me, could have been lying in dormancy across generations. Because let me tell you, my dear — there is something about you that didn’t just happen when your father’s sperm hit your mother’s egg. The sperm and egg carry a history that includes generations you don’t know.
Take a person like Stevie Wonder, who was blind from a young age. Where did his gifts come from? His mother? They came through her. And it is conceivable that five, 10 or 20 generations ago, there was someone with an extraordinary gift in Stevie’s family, but the external circumstances of that person’s life were such that they never gave rise to the gift’s blossoming.”
Sidney Poitier, Oprah Interview
