Top 100 Quotes About African American
#1. My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.
Tayari Jones
#2. I feel at home in a lot of places, but I am truly an African-American.
Yaya DaCosta
#3. As an African-American, I know all too well the negative thoughts and feelings hatred and bigotry cause.
Tim Hardaway
#4. I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
Gloria Reuben
#5. 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
#6. 'Revelations' is one of the most important pieces to the African American arts. It assesses the hope and despair of a people and overcoming the struggle with our faith.
Robert Battle
#7. When we rise in the morning ... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#8. Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle
#9. You done decided you want to go to the dance yet Brenda?" "Didn't I tell you that dances was lame?" "What's lame about them?" "I like mature niggas." "I'm not a nigga." "What are you?" "An African American." "Well I don't like African Americans. I like niggas.
Vincent Morris
#10. 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
#11. Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world.
Johnnetta B. Cole
#12. It is my belief that conscious African American students ought to be in a constant state of rage and in a constant search for ways to channel that rage into freedom struggle.
Pearl Cleage
#13. There's no question that there's been a breach in the trust between urban - especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.
Mark Shields
#14. When people see Barack Obama, they don't necessarily see an African-American president. They see someone who is a child of immigrants. They see someone whose family has worked hard and struggled. And they see many similarities between themselves and Barack Obama.
Grace Meng
#15. Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.
Donald Trump
#16. I've had some Democrat African-American leaders tell me they're really not all that comfortable with Obama as the lead at the MLK festivities 'cause he's not down for the struggle. He does not have that in his roots.
Rush Limbaugh
#17. I think a lot of African-American kids don't have fathers to teach them how to dress, so you end up being taught by pictures in magazine and movies. You see cowboys, Indians, old Hollywood films, Cary Grant. It has an effect on you.
Andre Benjamin
#18. It is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.
Rand Paul
#19. I am committed to ensure that our 2008 Republican presidential candidates forthrightly address issues of importance to the African-American community.
Ken Mehlman
#20. When you sit in America you miss the open plains and you miss the sound of rain and the smell of rain and the smell of the veld. If you're African it's different and I don't think one will ever become an American or British. It doesn't matter where you move, you will always be a South African,
Zola Budd
#21. 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
#23. Diabetes occurs at twice the rate in the African American community as it does in white Americans.
Xavier Becerra
#24. There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.
Mekhi Phifer
#26. I never doubted my ability, but ...
Hank Aaron
#27. It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American.
Utkarsh Ambudkar
#29. 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
#30. The numbers in Ohio as well as the rest of the nation make it clear that the African-American communities have been targeted and logic makes it clear that this did not happen coincidentally or unintentionally.
Mark Crutcher
#32. I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.
Wanda Sykes
#33. [Donald] Trump is going to appeal better to African Americans, Hispanics, and others than previous Republican candidates because he's talking about what they want: a fair chance to have a better life economically.
Jeff Sessions
#34. 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
#35. 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
#37. She said "sweet boy" again, as if making a diagnosis like tooth decay or flat feet. I was embarrassed. I didn't know if I was being insulted or complimented.
Shawn Stewart Ruff
#38. [Hillary] Clinton was able to assemble a winning Democratic coalition out here, beating Sanders among African-Americans, women, among women, and voters from union households, so, unions, women, African-Americans.
Chris Matthews
#40. We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
Yvette Clarke
#41. The good and bad are all tangled up together. American popular music is loved around the world because of its African rhythm. But that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for slavery.
Pete Seeger
#42. 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
#43. 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
#45. There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large.
Jack Kemp
#46. 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
#47. Yoga class is intimate even just from the standpoint of taking off your socks. Exposing your bare feet can be a big deal. You may be an African American next to a Caucasian or a Latino. But once practice begins and we drop in, separation dissolves.
James Fox
#48. 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
#49. One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.
Herbie Hancock
#50. I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.
Jerry Pinkney
#51. I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.
Ahmet Ertegun
#53. This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.
Jennifer Granholm
#54. 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
#55. A lot of people don't realize that hair is a big thing for a lot of people, not just African-American women. It's something to be aware of and to be cautious of.
Zendaya
#56. When I saw Fannie Lou Hamer speech I said, "Well, how did this Democratic Party that Miss Hamer is talking about, become the Democratic Party that now is the party of the African-American community?"
Leah D. Daughtry
#57. I don't think there is such a definition of a perfect family, but I do think that our marriages are in crisis. Our families are in crisis. And I think the African-American family is at one of the worst stages it's been at in a very long time in this country. Fatherlessness is rampant.
Leah Ward Sears
#59. I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon,
Kendrick Lamar
#60. 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
#61. Since Bush has been in office, African-American women have fallen behind in terms of income and wages.
Donna Brazile
#62. Everybody knows this legend in kind of African-American lore. There's always somebody in your neighborhood named Orangejello or Lemonjello. And that's spelled - Orangejello is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E-J-E-L-L-O.
Jordan Peele
#63. The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under indictment. They sent the killer of Prince Jones back to his work, because he was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our world's physical laws.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#65. I was taught from a young age that many people would treat me as a second-class citizen because I was African-American and because I was female.
Queen Latifah
#66. I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.
Rashid Johnson
#67. The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.
Stanley Crouch
#69. Panama's a really wonderful country. There's obviously the Panama Canal, which brings a lot of tourism, and a huge American influence; it's just a mix of so many great things: African, Caribbean, Latin American Spanish, all kinds of influences there.
J. August Richards
#70. I'm dying twice as fast
as any other American
between eighteen and thirty-five
This disturbs me,
but I try not to show it in public.
Essex Hemphill
#71. I think the eyeball is the same, [in] an American or African. The problem is the same, the treatment is the same. Yet why should there be so much variation in quality and in service?
Thulasiraj Ravilla
#72. You carry the weight of the preternatural world on those big shoulders of yours. But your heart is even bigger, and the burden you harbor there heavier.
N.D. Jones
#73. The South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#74. There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
#75. New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did spread overland.
Ned Sublette
#76. I don't buy the argument that there can't be a successful independent candidacy for the presidency of the United States. People who say, 'It can't happen,' are many of the same people who said we'd never elect an African American.
Mark McKinnon
#77. Remember that everyone's life is measured by the power that individual has to make the world better-this is all life is.
Booker T. Washington
#78. If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense.
Trevor Noah
#79. I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change.
Assata Shakur
#81. The media in America is not covering American AIDS very much. They're covering African AIDS as if somehow miraculously it's all stopped here. Well, it hasn't, and the one thing they're not saying about Africa is that all those people are going to die; there's no way these people can be saved - none.
Larry Kramer
#82. I have always respected everyone's ...
Hazel Scott
#83. When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose.
Edward Snowden
#84. Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that's chewing up.
Randall Robinson
#85. 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.
Robert Mugabe
#86. Slavery is a memory of something we cannot remember, and yet we cannot forget.
Bill T. Jones
#88. 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
#89. I think Mr. Cosby has always been very much an activist and a big proponent of African-American pride. That's how 'The Cosby Show' came about. I think in his older years, he has gotten a lot more direct and vocal about it. But I think he only wants the best for all of us.
Keshia Knight Pulliam
#91. As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.
Chadwick Boseman
#92. Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#93. The North has no interest in the particular Negro, but talks of justice for the whole. The South has not interest, and pretends none, in the mass of Negroes but is very much concerned about the individual.
Zora Neale Hurston
#94. Never Let anyone tell you that you can't; show them that you can.
Gloria Mallette
#95. Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.
Bernice L. McFadden
#96. Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture.
Tavis Smiley
#97. 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
#99. Don't say you want to be an actor and not know how to read a script. Don't give up 15 minutes before the miracle comes. Everyone's career ebbs and flows, especially if you're African American. That's the time to dig in and keep your instrument sharp.
Erik King
#100. Mom's a hypochondriac, too, so the best part was that every week she would get the disease that the medical shows were dramatizing. I'll never forget, they did an episode on sickle cell anemia, which as far as I know, is almost exclusively an African-American affliction.
Kathy Griffin
