Top 100 Black Culture Sayings
#1. I will not perform in this city as long as the blatant targeting of black culture and minorities congregating is acceptable common practice,
Illmaculate
#2. When I was going to school, I just wanted to be like everybody else. I would pull at my hair to try and get it to lie straight. America was where I would consume and absorb black culture, buy Ultra Sheen and watch 'Soul Train,' but I still had that weird in-between thing.
Neneh Cherry
#3. Sometimes in the black culture, being raised as an independent woman is misconstrued as someone who doesn't need a man. I think that's wrong. I think we all need someone.
Boris Kodjoe
#4. Black culture is cool, but black issues sure aren't, huh?
Azealia Banks
#5. And although black civil rights leaders like to point to a supposedly racist criminal justice system to explain why our prisons house so many black men, it's been obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior - behavior too often celebrated in black culture.
Jason L. Riley
#6. I'm admitting that I don't know that to be true, but it does sound pretty good. So a big part of my childhood was affecting black culture and black accents and black music and anything black I was into.
Moshe Kasher
#7. I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.
Arthur Ashe
#8. I think slavery was an awful, awful period in our history, but when I look at what's become of black culture since emancipation, I think you have to admit, maybe the Confederacy was on to something
Zach Braff
#9. 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
#10. Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.
Jess Row
#11. In the black culture, certain kids are given nicknames that they roll with forever; the nicknames outweigh their real names. I'm one of those scenarios.
Snoop Dogg
#12. Phillip Roth uses his Black women characters to make anti intellectual remarks about Black history month, begun by a man who reached intellectual heights that Roth will never attain.Roth is a petty bigot and his ignorant remarks about black culture expose him as a buffoon to scholars the world over.
Ishmael Reed
#13. Teenagers especially are very, very conscious about what is hip and what is lame and what is square and what is out and what is in, you know. And, I mean, I grew up right there in the middle of a black culture. And I knew dead-on what it was.
Jerry Leiber
#14. While it has become "cool" for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white people do not feel that this pleasure should be linked to unlearning racism.
Bell Hooks
#15. I used to joke for years that I was a black man. I adopted the black culture, the black race. I married a black woman, and I had black kids. I always considered myself a 'brother.'
Tommy Chong
#16. African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
#17. I was in Paris last year, where there's a great appreciation of many different aspects of African culture and of black culture. The music ... the art ... whatever ... And I kind of went with that.
Lenny Kravitz
#18. Black culture has been a huge influence in my life.
Eddie Huang
#19. What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we loved black culture?
Amandla Stenberg
#20. I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.
Alvin Ailey
#21. I've always loved black culture; I don't know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone.
Robert Greene
#22. Is distinctive black culture the cause of economic disparity between whites and blacks or merely the reflection of it?
Steven D. Levitt
#23. Black culture is a fight. We want to hold on to what we are, but sometimes the things that we are can be totally negative. You have to think: can't we try something new and not be seen as suspect?
Donald Glover
#24. If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.
Jackson Katz
#25. I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in. I didn't identify with black culture. Like, I didn't like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn't into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.
Zoe Kravitz
#26. Black folks are often individually regarded as the authority on every facet of black culture and the people who create it, but it's exhausting for most black people to constantly be relied upon as the go-to official spokesnegro.
Justin Simien
#27. As a child, I experienced black culture as many people did in America: on the TV, radio, and stages.
Shawn Amos
#28. Black culture is something I don't relate to much at all.
Dennis Rodman
#29. There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules - I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists.
Kara Walker
#30. Wigger: a young white who wants desperately to be down with hip-hop, who identifies more strongly with Black culture than white. (What's disturbing about this expression is its racist implications: if white kids down with hip-hop are "wiggers," what does that make Black kids down with hip-hop?)
Bakari Kitwana
#31. American music culture is black culture.
Yelawolf
#32. Every white person in this country-and I do not care what he or she says-knows one thing. They may not know, as they put, "what I want",but they know they would not like to be black here.
If they know that, then they know everything they need to know, and whatever else they say is a lie.
James Baldwin
#33. Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.
Mos Def
#34. A 'white' kid that asks too many questions is called *curious.* A 'black' kid that asks too many questions is called *forward.*
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#35. No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.
Marcus Garvey
#36. Looking at me from the outside, it is not very obvious, I know half my family is black and I feel close to their culture and their color.
Ryan Giggs
#37. 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
#38. When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.
Bruce Beresford
#39. 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
#40. This is our culture, and I don't care who the musician is, if he avoids black people, then he is scared of something. He doesn't have confidence in himself or else he doesn't believe in what he's doing.
Betty Carter
#41. I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just ... womanish.
Alice Walker
#42. While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop.
Bell Hooks
#43. Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.
Michael Eric Dyson
#44. When the culture is strong, you've got this consistency where black people can grow up in these places with this voice just resonating about our special-ness in the universe. And I always say you're in trouble if you get too far away from that core that grounds you.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#45. I just feel in a lot of ways black people are so much looser and cooler. Just as a culture, it's so much more real.
Paul Reubens
#46. A 'death mirror' held up to American culture - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and cocaine. A 'high' view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.
Kenneth Anger
#47. The core of the culture is racism and how black men are viewed. They've always been demonized and seen as threats in our culture. Another holdover from slavery. We've got to deal with that core root of racism and demonization of the upbringing of black men. Black women are not exempt by any means.
Marian Wright Edelman
#48. People always say 'You do racial comedy.' And I don't, exactly. I do cultural comedy. Because race and culture are two different things. There's black people from America and then there's black people from Africa. Racially, they're the same; culturally, they're extremely different.
Russell Peters
#49. The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.
Bell Hooks
#50. Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.
Chuck Palahniuk
#51. There's been a lot of talk about black men and the presence and absence of black men in positions of power in American culture.
Jess Row
#52. The teachings of Elijah Muhammad on how black people have been brainwashed.How they've been taught to love white and hate black, how we've been robbed of our names in slavery.We were robbed of our culture, we were robbed of our true history. So it left us a walking dead man.
Muhammad Ali
#53. A black cat crossing the road is considered bad luck in some cultures. What about the cat's culture?
Anno Nomius
#54. The reason we life black people isn't because they're black. We like them because they're not as grey as we are.
John Cage
#55. Our culture thrives on black-and-white narratives, clearly defined emotions, easy endings, and so, this thrust into complexity exhausts.
Caroline Knapp
#56. Racial oppression of black people in America has done what neither class oppression or sexual oppression, with all their perniciousness, has ever done: destroyed an entire people and their culture.
Eleanor Holmes Norton
#57. If you really think back to the culture or just black America before rap music took off, New York could have been Paris.
Ice Cube
#58. I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.
H. Rap Brown
#59. It was a black and white film [at first]. And then it changed to colour film, and I was surprised and culture shocked when I was six or seven years old. And then HD, then 3D now. So what's going? What's coming next? It's so exciting.
Hiroyuki Sanada
#60. Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.
Hugo Black
#61. For me, Twitter works best as a way of taking pictures of being stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. If people really want to read really funny quips about life, parenting, and pop culture, then by all means read Michael Ian Black's tweets.
Michael Showalter
#62. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Jason Whitlock
#63. She walked confidently next to him. Her black hair was slicked down and tucked behind her ear. "To better fight Guardians with, my pretty," she had told him earlier that morning.
Marie Johnston
#64. When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response.
John Cusack
#65. I'm not interested in making all-black films - I come from a very diverse culture; I want to work with every type of person. I work a lot with women executives because they seem to be a lot more open minded about that and a lot more progressive in that way.
Idris Elba
#66. 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
#67. There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!
Jody Watley
#68. The fear of blacks has become the dirty little secret of our political culture.
Norman Podhoretz
#69. The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americanas to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.
In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.
Tim Wise
#70. I feel like the world we live in seems to be full of an increasingly grey area, but the culture that we live in seems to be getting really entrenched in black and white positions, and I think it's urgent to talk about that because it's going to kill us all.
Paul Bettany
#71. The Black Lives Matter movement can be read as an attempt to keep mourning an open dynamic in our culture because black lives exist in a state of precariousness. Mourning then bears both the vulnerability inherent in black lives and the instability regarding a future for those lives.
Claudia Rankine
#73. Teach the student what needs to be taught.
'Cause black and white kids both take shorts
When one doesn't know about the other one's culture,
Ignorance swoops down like a vulture.
KRS-One
#74. It's infuriating that yesterday, my father had to pull all my younger cousins into a room and tell them to be more careful. He had to explain that in some cases, their brown skin convicts them before an offense is even committed.
Janelle Gray
#75. One of the more interesting stories in pig evolution during domestication concerns the culture-specific nature of this artificial selection, most notably the black coloration characteristic of Chinese breeds.
Anonymous
#76. Bipolar disorder is so swept under the rug as a nation and, I think especially, by black people. It's not our culture to go get therapy. 'Give them medicine for what?' We put people in court, put them in court again, versus really paying attention to what it is they are going through.
Trai Byers
#77. I was born in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1948 but grew up in a black neighborhood. During elementary and middle school, I commuted to a bilingual school in Chinatown. So I did not confront white American culture until high school.
Laurence Yep
#78. Unlike some mainland black groups, Tasmanian Aborigines now have no traditional tribal culture left. It was taken from them with great violence and great rapidity.
Richard Flanagan
#79. Haiti is unique - the first successful slave revolt in history, the first black republic etc., and then when you get into the culture, the voodoo, and that wonderful synchretization of Christian and African belief and symbology, it's like nothing the world has ever seen.
Ben Fountain
#80. We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff.
Huey Newton
#81. Ask yourself this question: Of this had been a white child found dead in a black neighborhood, would they be knocking on every door? 'Yes, sir.' Searching high and low? 'Yes, indeed.' It this had been a white child, would they paint him as a sinner and not a saint? 'Lord, no...
Ravi Howard
#82. Films portraying successful black people getting married are great, but films that only show one aspect of our culture, bother me.
Drake
#83. How did we suddenly become entranced with gangster culture? I saw it this morning on campus. When did the black community say we should all look like criminals?
Tim Reid
#84. Black is not a notion. Africa is not a color. Africa is a culture. So you can be pitch black and I am my color but I'm more African than you can ever be because culturally there are certain things that you just don't understand.
Jihan El-Tahri
#85. Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed.
Barack Obama
#86. I love what the church offers to us as a culture - black people in particular. We would be nowhere without the black church.
Oprah Winfrey
#87. My daughter is black and she has to know what it is like to be black. My daughter should know you, Aiken, but she should learn what it means to be black, and you cannot teach her that.
Allan Dare Pearce
#88. Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.
Steven Biko
#89. I went to work one morning, and outside my door was Cindy Crawford in a black bra, and I thought that very clearly the building is making progress in integrating itself into various layers of our culture.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
#90. I'm black, blind, seriously smart, and sensitive. No age would be easy for me. At least the culture had culture then, it had style.
Dean Koontz
#91. The black nation of Egypt is the only country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology
Malcolm X
#92. She has enough black eyeliner on to outline a corpse, and her skin's so pale she looks like she's just broken dawn.
John Green
#93. It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.
Issa Rae
#94. In a culture defined by shades of gray, I think the absolute black and white choices in dark young adult novels are incredibly satisfying for readers.
Maggie Stiefvater
#95. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white, practice a different religion, come from a different culture, or have a disability. If you're different from most of the people you're surrounded by, some people might not be as tolerant as they should be.
Brooklyn Sudano
#96. Perhaps we are able to see only that which we are prepared to see, and in our culture, the cost of insight is an uncertainty that threatens our already unstable sense of order and requires a constant questioning of accepted assumptions. Ralph Ellison (1995a, 31)
Black Hawk Hancock
#97. I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.
Henry Louis Gates
#98. I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.
August Wilson
#99. The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.
Jess Row
#100. We've become a culture where earning money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting it does. That is the essence of redistribution.
Ken Blackwell
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