Daily Inspiration Quote by Yaphet Kotto

There is a small act of defiance baked into the plainness of “I like doing business in a black city.” Yaphet Kotto isn’t dressing the sentiment up in moral language; he’s framing it as preference, habit, even pleasure. That’s the point. In a culture that routinely treats Black-majority spaces as problems to be solved, the line flips the default setting: Blackness isn’t a deficit, it’s an asset, a place where life and work can feel unforced.

The phrase “doing business” is doing heavy lifting. It signals money, agency, and the right to move through an economy without apology. Coming from an actor who spent decades navigating an industry where Black talent was often welcomed on-screen but sidelined off it, the sentence reads like a quiet rebuttal to the old integration story that says success means proximity to whiteness. Kotto’s not asking permission to enjoy Black civic life; he’s stating that it works for him.

The subtext also nods to the everyday calculus of safety and dignity. “Black city” isn’t romanticized as a utopia; it’s implied as a place where the social temperature changes - fewer performances, fewer assumptions, more familiarity in the small transactions that make up a day. It’s an economic and psychological claim at once.

Culturally, the line lands as a refusal of the “post-racial” fantasy. It insists that geography and community still matter, and that choosing Black space can be a positive, intentional act - not a fallback, not segregation, not nostalgia, but self-determination.