Top 100 Black African Quotes
#1. The reason why Botswana has done very well is because it's the only black African country which went back to its roots and built upon its own indigenous institutions.
George Ayittey
#2. After Nigeria, we are the second biggest black African nation. We are the headquarters of the African Union. We are the only African country that has never been colonized. This is perhaps the last surviving African civilization.
Meles Zenawi
#3. For their abuse of [the Black African] race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.
Brigham Young
#4. I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven't had very good modeling in submission.
Faye Wattleton
#5. The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life.
Leopold Sedar Senghor
#6. Is it possible for white America to really understand blacks' distrust of the legal system, their fears of racial profiling and the police, without understanding how cheap a black life was for so long a time in our nation's history?
Philip Dray
#7. I want to introduce my readers to people they may never have met, take them places they may never have visited, and present them with situations they may never have encountered.
J. Everett Prewitt
#8. Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born.
Ketch Secor
#10. There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.
Mekhi Phifer
#11. And that's the beginning of the primary conversation in African American literature, right there: the African descendant explaining to the European descendant about how white people's actions are affecting the lives of black people.* In
Mat Johnson
#12. I never said I wasn't Black ... I want to make that very clear. I said, I am not African-American. I never expected my personal beliefs and comments to spark such emotion in people. I think it is only positive when we can openly discuss race and being labeled in America.
Raven-Symone
#13. There's a thing called the 'One Drop' theory in African-American culture, which is if you have one drop of black blood in you, you're black.
Keegan-Michael Key
#14. We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
Yvette Clarke
#15. It's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person.
Warren Ballentine
#16. Many people believe that determining who is 'black' is rather easy, a task simplified by the administration of the one-drop rule. Under the one-drop rule, any discernible African ancestry stamps a person as 'black.'
Randall Kennedy
#17. George E. Johnson marketed the "relaxer," a chemical product used to straighten otherwise curly African American hair. According to some estimates, the black hair care industry is worth more than one billion dollars annually.
Nicola Yoon
#18. I feel like because black Cuban artists don't have the kind of pressure to thematize race in the way that African-American artists do, there's more space for them to do their art without having to discuss it in terms of racial identity.
Rachael Price
#20. I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American.
Jimmy Carter
#21. I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'
Naya Rivera
#22. We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.
Henry Louis Gates
#23. I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon,
Kendrick Lamar
#24. I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.
Spike Lee
#25. During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.
Michael N. Castle
#26. A black Mercedes Benz 450 SL pulled up. It was your classic hood auto beloved of terrorists, pimps and African dictators.
Adrian McKinty
#27. Welfare has destroyed the African-American family by telling young black women that husbands and fathers are unnecessary and obsolete. ... We have incentivized fornication rather than marriage, and it's no wonder we are now awash in the disastrous social consequences of people who rut like rabbits.
Bryan Fischer
#28. As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.
Claudia Rankine
#29. I think it's a wonderful thing to have African-American characters. Look at life. It's not a white world or a black world; there are all kind of people in it. It's showing growth, and in today's world there are so many outlets.
Darius McCrary
#30. The number of African Americans in my profession is woefully small; about two percent of architects in the country are black. I'd like to see more diversity. That's why whenever I'm asked to speak at middle and high schools I always say yes.
Philip Freelon
#31. At its core, black theology is predicated on the assertion that God has a unique relationship with African Americans. God is not a passive bystander in human history but rather an active participant in the struggles of oppressed and dispossessed people.
Melissa V. Harris-Perry
#32. The mainstreaming of African American history was a byproduct of the long black freedom struggle, the early black history movement, and the black student movement of the Black Power era.
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie
#33. Black people are dying in this country because we have a criminal justice system which is out of control, a system in which over 50% of young African-American kids are unemployed, it is estimated that a black baby born today has a one in four chance of ending up in the criminal justice system.
Bernie Sanders
#34. I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.
Manu Herbstein
#35. Donald Trump insisted yesterday that he is not racist, because one time an African-American won Apprentice. Because nothing says 'not racist' like making a black man run your errands.
Conan O'Brien
#36. The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.
Aberjhani
#37. Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.
Arthur Ashe
#39. Black children need to see their lives reflected in the books they read. If they don't, they won't feel welcome in the world of literature. The lives of African-Americans are rich and diverse, and the books our children read should reflect that.
Valerie Wilson Wesley
#40. Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.
Bell Hooks
#41. Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.
Toni Morrison
#42. Black(people) hold onto their God just as the drunken man holds on to the street lamp post - for physical support only.
Tai Solarin
#43. First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.
Carlos Santana
#44. Slave masters thought they were making a difference in black people's lives too. Saving them from their "wild African ways." Same shit, different century. I wish people like them would stop thinking that people like me need saving.
Angie Thomas
#45. Some black people want to get in touch with their African roots. But then you got some black people that just don't give a damn. You tell them, 'Hey, I just got back from the motherland.' They're like, 'Where'd you go - Detroit? Did you see The Temptations?'
Wanda Sykes
#46. Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.
John McWhorter
#47. There's no doubt that many of the mainstream white institutions tend to be cosmetic and symbolic when it comes to including African-Americans, whereas we black folk tend to be much more sensitive about embracing others, and we have a long history of that.
Cornel West
#48. As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I've always been very pro-African-American - or whatever phrase we now use.
Gore Vidal
#49. We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls.
Janelle Monae
#50. 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.
Bill Dedman
#51. To handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime.
Carter G. Woodson
#52. It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you can do with natural hair
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#53. ...there is a predator-like mental scan that black women have to do before speaking, and even after we've done risk assessment, things can still go astray.
Phoebe Robinson
#54. I saw him enthusiastically greet a hulking big African American (Do they call them African Americans here?).
Brett Kiellerop-Morris
#55. I think anyone that comes to Nigeria has to offer value. What value are you bringing? There are Black Americans here. I think we've moved beyond that Africans vs. African Americans. They may have more issues with us than we do with them.
Mo Abudu
#56. Calling out the supposed 'abuse' of welfare by blacks and other people of color is a time-honored tactic for distracting the general public from actual national issue. It also taps into latent, subconscious racism, which is what right-wing politicians would call a 'win-win.
Justin Simien
#57. In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.
Paul Robeson
#58. Within a lot of African-American households, I think, there's an idea that black men don't want to take an active participation in the lives of their children. That if they do, there has to be some sort of ulterior motive.
Gabrielle Union
#59. The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.
Henry Louis Gates
#61. Holocaust survivors and their descendants are supposed to hate those who oppressed and killed them and their people. Black people are not. This is how anti-blackness works.
Darnell Lamont Walker
#62. In the Shadow of Slavery covers two and a half centuries of black life in New York City, and skillfully interweaves the categories of race and class as they affected the formation of African American identity. Leslie Harris has made a major contribution to our understanding of the black experience.
Eric Foner
#63. I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.
Paul Beatty
#64. To misbehave us to denounce the social norms that limit individuals based on who they are. That to make history is to upset patriarchy, a system that is intent on controlling and marginalising others.
Malebo Sephodi
#66. I feel that the kinks, curls, or tight coils in Afro hair is beautiful and unique. No other race on this planet has hair like ours - that makes me proud.
Monica Millner
#67. Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#68. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery
Trent Franks
#69. I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.
Chadwick Boseman
#70. Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only Fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 1:7 NLT
Eddie Johnson
#71. 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.
Bill Dedman
#72. This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging.
Raynetta Manees
#73. I am more of a conservationist, myself. And people have come to me and said, "Wow, you're an African-American conservationist!" And my response is, "No, I'm a conservationist who happens to be black."
Jerome Ringo
#74. Bill Clinton is like a lot of white politicians. They eat soul food, they party with black women, they play the saxophone, but when it comes to domestic and foreign policy, they make the same decisions that are destructive to African people in this country and throughout the world.
Sister Souljah
#75. 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.
Pam Grier
#76. My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.
Peter Abrahams
#77. 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?
Gilbert Gottfried
#79. We've gone through the names - Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that's an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black?
Spike Lee
#80. Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.
Aberjhani
#81. I feel like I come from a smaller off shoot of black people because I am mixed. People say I'm African American but that doesn't include the other half of me.
Maya Rudolph
#82. America's put American Black Folks in such a bad position, empty plates and glasses now get us full.
Darnell Lamont Walker
#83. What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.
August Wilson
#84. Her father was an intimidating man who held fast to his belief in his African heritage; that black should not marry white to avoid racial confusion. She was in love with a white man whose mother wished to keep her family's heritage intact by not crossbreeding with another race.
Katherine Vogel
#85. Yet, thousands of africans and young african youths have failed to acknowledge the significant of what madiba gave them. To me, he be called the pride in black skin and the freedom we are enjoying
Victor Adeagbo
#87. My mother's mother is Jewish and African, so I guess that would be considered Creole. My mother's father was Cherokee Indian and something else. My dad's mother's Puerto Rican and black, and his father was from Barbados.
Meagan Good
#88. I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.
James McBride
#89. The fact that women are very young in obtaining their civil rights and African-Americans are young in obtaining their civil rights, I think it's about time that we extend that to all Americans, whether straight, gay, purple, green, black, brown.
Octavia Spencer
#90. I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman ... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.
Trevor Noah
#91. It's important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
#92. Names are powerful and are prophecies of the future. The name you are called is a sign of what you are and what you would become.
Jude Idada
#93. It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'
Joe Haldeman
#94. In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don't want them.
Noam Chomsky
#95. Those close to Mr. Obama say he grows irritated at being misunderstood - not just by opponents who insinuate that he caters to African-Americans, but also by black lawmakers and intellectuals who fault him for not making his presidency an all-out assault on racial disparity.
Jodi Kantor
#96. If the Democrats have their way, African Americans will continue to feel oppressed, despised and handicapped into the indefinite future. All progress will be downplayed and every setback amplified. In this way, Democrats can continue to rely on lopsided black support at the polls.
Mona Charen
#97. You don't have to be African American to really enjoy 'Frisky Business'. But as far as being black, a lot of people in New York have been stopped and frisked, so that hits home for them.
Jessica Williams
#98. The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.
John Henrik Clarke
#99. In some African tribes, this would make us married," a dry male voice returned. Angel looked up. His arms reflexively gripping her waist, a tall, lean man with windswept black hair looked down at her with amused emerald eyes. "In others, it would mean we're being prepared for supper
Suzanne Enoch
#100. That's how we do it in the black ...
Snoop Dogg
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