A Quote by Irene Cara

We have a tendency in this country that when we say Black it automatically means Black Americans. But that's a big mistake, and that keeps us divided. There are Blacks all over this entire world-even in Africa.
There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
Republicans have reached out so much to black Republicans because it's part of our tradition. Blacks have been in this nation longer than most other Americans with the possible exception of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The first blacks in Congress and the first black Governor were all Republicans. It was Republicans who fought the Civil War over slavery and who introduced the Civil Rights legislation over the next hundred years.
America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.
Normally, 'black responsibility' is a forbidden phrase for a black leader -- not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites.
My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world. Some of the greatest inspirations in my life have been black Americans. And I just wanted to say thank you. They've been a huge inspiration, to myself and this country.
I was adopted my black Americans, I feel that I'm a 'Hybrid'. When I'm around Africans'I suddenly feel very black American. And when I'm around black Americans'I feel very North African. North Africa and black America are both the creators of Kola Boof.
When someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.
Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara- do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized - in a word, savage.
I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism.
I think that black Africa is extremely terrifying. Black Africa can become a maelstrom of warring tribes without the outside world needing to feel the need to do anything about it.
Look at black people dying and suffering in South Africa. I ask why. We've dropped bombs on no one, we've harmed no one in the world, yet for some incredible reason, black people have suffered at an extraordinary level all over the world.
Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.
The black man in North America was sickest of all politically. He let the white man divide him into such foolishness as considering himself a black 'Democrat,' a black 'Republican,' a black 'Conservative,' or a black 'Liberal' ...when a ten-million black vote bloc could be the deciding balance of power in American politics, because the white man's vote is almost always evenly divided.
It's crazy; in the States, people think the black power movement drew inspiration from Africa. All these Americans come over here looking for awareness. They don't realize they're the ones who've got it over there.
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