Top 1200 African-American Quotes & Sayings - Page 14

When my kids were young, we used to go to a place called The Shrine of the Black Madonna in Houston. It was an African-American bookstore where they sold paintings, but they also had a room that was an all-purpose center. If you wanted to have a dance recital or anything that was related to the community activities, you could have it there.

I have always, or for the most part, identified myself as a biracial person. Much to the chagrin of a lot of African-American people that I meet, because it's almost like there's a betrayal, an intrinsic betrayal: "Don't do that, brotha, we need you. We need you here, in this fold."

There's an African-American professor at a noted Ivy League school who is saying there's three kinds of white people, and only one of the three different kinds is worth anything, and that they're so tiny and so small a group that you don't need to be worried.

We have this American president, Obama, born of an African father, who is saying we will not give you aid if you don't embrace homosexuality. We ask, was he born out of homosexuality? We need continuity in our race, and that comes from the woman, and no to homosexuality.

It's just surreal because I get to empower other little African-American girls around the world and say that you can be a superhero, and you rock, and you can conquer the world, and you are beautiful just the way you are, and your flaws are nothing, and you're awesome.

I think that there are some people on the so-called Left who might say we have to circle our wagons around the first African American president, and to me that is racism in reverse because his policies are actually still the racist policies of empire.

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

I look in the eyes and I see the heart. As long as it's a human story. I would like to turn on my television and see African American, Hispanic, Asian as well as Caucasian. And I think there are probably more people like me.

I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.

My mom is from Ghana, and my dad is from the States, so even in my family when I was growing up, my mom said I was the American one, and my dad said I was the weird African one.

During the 2008 campaign, I strongly endorsed Barack Obama for president. I did so early, when many Democratic leaders - including many prominent African-American politicians - believed the safe bet was to back then-front-runner Hillary Clinton.

There is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he is African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.

I haven't really ever seen a big budget Hollywood film with African music. Most of the time, it's just Hollywood's perception of what African music is.

I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback.

Obama is the first African-American president, and for some people, that means a great deal, and for some people, it means very little.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

I like to make bombueti, which is basically the South African national dish. It's basically a South African curry shepherd's pie kind of thing.

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.

Does a black person make them an African American? No. There are Hispanics that are very, very dark skinned so the word has lost its meaning, it's not a very concise or proper word to use even today and it wasn't then.

Even as considering African-Americans, immigrants and other groups who may be marginalized in different ways, American Muslims are still one of the most marginalized groups. Overt prejudice is probably more acceptable toward American Muslims than any other single group in the U.S. There is still a lot of policies in place that are incredibly effective that don't show any signs of eroding. So, I don't want to overstate the optimism but I think things are headed gradually in the right direction. Just because of the distance between us and 9/11.

I'm the least racist person. Friends of mine that happen to be African-American said: "You're the least racist person we've ever met". Give me a break!

It's just a fact that if you're a young African-American man and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. So we've got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.

I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

In '08, Barrack Obama was famously elected president. Even though I'd supported McCain and dreaded what I feared Barrack might do, I felt a surge of elation when the networks announced he'd won. I really hadn't thought the U.S. would go for an African-American for a decade or so.

King had come to Memphis to lend his moral authority to the struggle of striking municipal sanitation workers who were overwhelmingly African-American. They earned poverty wages, endured degrading working conditions, and faced brutal beatings when they tried to organize.

When my daughter was born, I was reading a lot of children's books, and there weren't any characters who looked like her. For all the content that's out there, there aren't many African-American protagonists. I looked at it like, if there isn't someone else creating it then I have to do it myself.

Trump's position is that the people who are most victimised by black criminals are law-abiding black people, and he's been doing very well with the African American people by taking that message to them.

Congolese rumba was so huge in Africa that everybody was inspired by it. But my African roots brought me this music. In every African family, parties in Brussels, we used to listen to this kind of music. And salsa music as well.

Reggie Campbell and Kathleen Goldsmith are participants in an American success story, the unprecedented boom of home-buying by African-Americans in the 1990s. Only he is black and she is white. When he moved into the neighborhood, she moved out.

As an African-American, I think the way I treated others affected how people treated me. If people do attack you in certain ways, you can focus on it and be vengeful in your approach or take the high road - get over it.

You say 'African music' and you think 'tribal drumming.' But there's a lot of African music that's like James Brown, and a lot, too, that sounds very Hispanic.

What moved us was not so much what would it do for South Africa, but there has been a great keenness on the Continent that the location of the Pan African Parliament must add to its credibility. And, so we said, fine, it's a contribution to this process of the democratisation of the African Continent.

African American students have less access to algebra and more access to seclusion and restraint than do their white peers. The significant disparity in educational resources has caused this problem of disparate discipline and disparate academic outcomes.

People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

'Invisible Man' holds such an honored place in African-American literature that Ralph Ellison didn't have to write anything else to break bread with the remembered dead. But he did try to go on, because if a writer has done one great thing, then the pressures to do another are intense.

At the end of the day, I'm still an African-American woman in a male-dominated industry, so sometimes you have to deal with people not taking your ideas seriously. But I look at it as, I'd rather have adversities in something that I love than doing something that I hate or where I am not interested.

I have seen African countries negotiate bilaterally and within the WTO. African countries come to the WTO prepared and defend their interests with vigour.

First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

As an African-American parent, we have to really, really worry about our children and how our children are perceived in America.

Sex in the City was a different kind of phenomenon because of the show itself is a phenomenon and to me that's successful because to resonate with women across the board for six years and have only one African-American actor pass through for one episode.

Spend a day around my players, around my African-American players, my Hispanic players, my Polynesian players, and you'll see the true beauty of who they are.

I look white to a lot of people. And I'm not. I'm African-American. I'm mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I've dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity.

During World War II, hundreds of thousands of people actually - and among them many African-American - migrated to the Hampton Roads area because of the job boom that was happening. It was a place where you could get stable war jobs.

As CNN saw our growth in African-American viewership, they affirmed a fundamental truth of news coverage - people will watch you if they see themselves in what you report. It doesn't hurt if the people doing the reporting look like them, too.

Eviction affects old folks and young folks, sick people and able-bodied people, white communities and African-American communities.

I get so tickled when that pilot happens to be an African American because I rarely see that. The same is true when I go to find restaurants. I mean, most places I go, I kind of have some idea who the chef is, which is why I want to go.

I grew up in an African household, so lots of chicken, lots of rice. We ate Jollof rice, a very West African dish.

I'm also working on another independent film called Roxanne, Roxanne, about Roxanne Shante, who was one of the first African American battle rappers from Brooklyn. It is produced by Forest Whitaker and Pharrell [williams], so I'm really in great hands.

Respectfully, the civil rights movement for people with disabilities is modeled on the African American civil rights movement. I'm old enough to remember 1964. I was a junior in high school.

A young girl reached out to me to be her mentor one day, which I didn't really know anything about. What I did remember was what it was to be alone as an African-American dancer in the ballet world and wanting to connect with someone who looks like me.

I've never understood people who say they're not a practicing Jew. You never hear a black guy say he's not a practicing African-American. What does it even mean?

Of course, we have leaders in the African American community as well that we've all worked with. One of the great rewards of being an activist is that you get to meet all these wonderful people. And there are many unsung heroes. There are so many out there that are good people that are working hard.

What do I bring to a film? I think, maybe, I know for a fact that I focus on connection of character; I focus on warmth and a heart, but I don't know if it's because I'm African American or because I'm crazy -who knows.

Bobby Lashley was the first and to have the opportunity to challenge for the championship when it is even rare to see an African American even headline a pay-per-view; it makes my heart soar. I'm able to be in this position to make everyone who supported me proud.

Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can't drop that. It's reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.

And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.

Come on, we would be foolish to say that there's never been African-American leads in some capacity, people of color in some capacity, leading shows or what have you. But it hasn't happened enough and in a manner that is an accurate reflection of the world that we live in.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.