Quotes About African Americans

#1. People know Tyler Perry, and there are standards they've come to expect from him. His brand is uplifting, and it's something a lot of inner-city African-Americans can relate to.

Michael Jai White

#2. It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos, and women, who powered our victory in 2008, stand together once again.

Barack Obama

#3. There are features that African Americans have that are similar! There are features that white people have that are similar! Features that Hispanic people have that are similar!

Don Lemon

#4. While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did.

Eric Holder

#5. It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites.

Michael Emerson

#6. The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America.

Ishmael Reed

#7. I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp.

Assata Shakur

#8. Rent-to-own provides a vital service to millions of Americans. It is also critical for African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities to have access to alternative products and services, such as rent-to-own.

William Lacy Clay Jr.

#9. Currently, more than 4.7 million African Americans receive Social Security benefits, and nearly 8 million people with disabilities depend on Social Security for their daily sustenance.

Chaka Fattah

#10. Clearly, a large number of African-Americans don't have faith that the laws are being executed fairly in Ferguson, and that's a problem ... We need to ensure Africans-Americans feel confident in the rule of law.

Claire McCaskill

#11. I'd like to see marriage count again among African-Americans and not just in the society in general.

Leah Ward Sears

#12. The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

Charles B. Rangel

#13. I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

Viola Davis

#14. Roppongi is now virtually a foreign neighborhood. Africans-I don't mean African-Americans-who don't speak English are there doing who knows what. This is leading to new forms of crime such as car theft. We should be letting in people who are intelligent.

Shintaro Ishihara

#15. Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed.

Lynn Swann

#16. Just as Huckleberry Finn was published, the first generation of African Americans raised in the postslavery era began to come of age. Among them were people with musical talent, and at first they went to work in minstrelsy, in the well-worn patterns of show business they'd inherited.

Dennis McNally

#17. Indians were here first - it's about time. We're way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we're beginning to take a page out of their notebook.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

#18. It's so weird to turn on a switch and be the role model for all women, for all African-Americans. That doesn't happen that easily. It just doesn't. And so I don't act up in public and I don't do anything weird - because my sisters are watching me, not because the world is watching me.

Gabourey Sidibe

#19. What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

Michael Emerson

#20. I say 'Merry Christmas' to people I don't know, or to people I know are Christians. I say 'Happy Hanukkah' to people I know to be or suspect to be Jewish. And I don't say 'Happy Kwanzaa,' because I think African Americans get enough insults all year round.

Christopher Hitchens

#21. This whole notion that all African-Americans are not going to vote for Obama is not necessarily true. I believe a third would vote for me, based on my own anecdotal feedback. Not vote for me because I'm black but because of my policies.

Herman Cain

#22. Once there are more African Americans and Asian Americans behind the scenes as producers, writers, and directors, I think more inclusive casting will happen.

Nicole Ari Parker

#23. Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough."

Michael Emerson

#24. There are plenty of African-Americans in this country - and I would say this goes right up to the White House - who are not by any means poor, but are very much afflicted by white supremacy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#25. As you know, in this country Anglo-Americans are about 75 to 76 percent home ownership in this country, where Hispanics, African Americans are less than 50 percent.

Alphonso Jackson

#26. We talk about freedoms for African-Americans but unless you have more than one option politically, how free are you?

Lynn Swann

#27. What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.

Andrew Young

#28. It is extremely rough to follow through with my goals, but I felt a responsibility to show the world what the African Americans are facing through this rough patch.

Ida B. Wells

#29. I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.

Danny Glover

#30. A very hurting thing for Black Americans - to feel that we can't love our enemies. People forget what a great tradition we have as African-Americans in the practice of forgiveness and compassion. And if we neglect that tradition, we suffer.

Bell Hooks

#31. What the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe, plantation owners and law enforcement [officers] were doing to the African-Americans.

Morris Dees

#32. They say African Americans. I say black people. I've only been to Africa once. I've been in America all my life!

Herman Cain

#33. I know there has long been a great frustration among the African Americans in Nevada over their belief that we have not adequately responded to their desires to become more educated and more productive citizens.

James E. Rogers

#34. No one would stand for it [being the fool in the media] in a minute if you took any other group -Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, women - but somehow it's okay to do that with hillbillies.

John Shelton Reed

#35. Every day in America, African Americans are reminded of their race in ways large and small. Every day.

Jennifer Granholm

#36. I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films.

Wes Craven

#37. As African-Americans, we often spend our time and energy blaming other people for the problems we see around us.

Pearl Cleage

#38. Just because a black man is running the RNC doesn't mean black folks are going to, 'Oh, OK, I will be a Republican.' Just as with the election of President Obama. All the problems and concerns that are very important to African Americans don't get solved overnight.

Michael Steele

#39. The highest percentage of African Americans own their own homes today than ever in our nation's history.

Ed Gillespie

#40. Silicon Valley is not a perfect meritocracy, but it is open to all who are highly motivated. For example, there is a dearth of women, Hispanics, and African Americans in Silicon Valley.

Deborah Perry Piscione

#41. To my knowledge, no progressive educator has ever suggested that children didn't need to know the "mere facts" about the contributions of African Americans to our society.

Sol Stern

#42. 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

#43. I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans, Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race.

Condoleezza Rice

#44. We need candidate schools to recruit more young African-Americans to run for office and more diverse law enforcement communities.

Claire McCaskill

#45. Delaware State is no longer a college for African Americans without other choices, it is a university of choice.

Michael N. Castle

#46. African Americans had been compelled to work in Alabama mines prior to the Great Depression. His grandfather, once a coal miner himself, had told him stories of a similar burial field near the family home place south of Birmingham.

Douglas A. Blackmon

#47. Civil rights was not an impossible dream. Thousands of brave African Americans stepped forward to make it happen.

Martin O'Malley

#48. Out of 30 years of Second City I was probably the third African-American with the main stage cast. I was surprised when I first heard that. I think part of the reason that improvisation has never been popular with African-Americans is that it isn't popular in the inner cities.

Tim Meadows

#49. Within the United States, there is a real division between the PhDs given in science and math to the Asian community, to the traditional white community, and then to African-Americans and Hispanics.

Juan Enriquez

#50. I mean it used to be, there was a time ... when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage.

Ben Stein

#51. Twenty-two million African-Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America.

Malcolm X

#52. The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York, combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned, really turned me on to The Best Man.

Taye Diggs

#53. My school was pretty much all African Americans, but it was still a little tough to be in because I didn't have a lot of money. And when I came back to my neighborhood, it was tough to fit in there, too, because I was wearing Catholic school clothes, and I had two parents, which was rare.

Ryan Coogler

#54. [Some] Americans are generally incapable of perceiving class differences among blacks and are quick to ascribe antisocial underclass behavior to all African Americans.

Leon Dash

#55. Americans until 1924. States like Arizona and New Mexico found ways to continue restricting voting rights until 1948, just as several southern states continue to do in this century to African Americans.

Brian D. McLaren

#56. The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

Rand Paul

#57. We need a broader party. If we're not doing better with millennials and women and Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans and others, we will have a tough time being a majority party at the national level.

Rob Portman

#58. Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.

Michelle Alexander

#59. I know that if a team had a derogatory name for African Americans, I would help those who helped extinguish that name. I have quite a few friends who are Native Americans. And even if I didn't have Native American friends, the name of the team is disrespectful.

Mike Carey

#60. African-Americans are underrepresented.

Arlen Specter

#61. I can never do justice to the great feeling of amazement and encouragement I felt when, perhaps for the first time in American history, white citizens of a Southern state banded together to come to Selma and show their indignation about the injustices against the African-Americans.

Amelia Boynton Robinson

#62. I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.

Lee Daniels

#63. Lovie Smith and I are not only the first two African-Americans but Christian coaches showing that you can win doing it the Lord's way and we're more proud of that.

Tony Dungy

#64. Who we are as African-Americans, as black folks in the diaspora, our cultural destiny, has been shaped by both the enslaved and the free.

Bell Hooks

#65. I do think, however, that there's a very diverse point of view in the African-American community. There's a lot of different voices that need to be heard. I don't claim and pretend to know the thoughts and opinions and ideas of all African-Americans.

J. C. Watts

#66. This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#67. Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans.

James Meredith

#68. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

Ric Keller

#69. African Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do.

William J. Clinton

#70. African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us.

Cynthia McKinney

#71. Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, women - we're all trying to find our place in this world of cinema and television and theater. And the great thing with comedy is that most of the time, you could be orange. It doesn't matter, as long you're funny.

Sandra Bullock

#72. All the struggles that were fought for here in the United States for African Americans, you now enjoy the privileges of. You now come here and can enjoy privileges that were fought for by African Americans over several generations.

Danai Gurira

#73. From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

Bill Frist

#74. Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was.

Diane Watson

#75. If you think back , the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated.We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it.

George Clooney

#76. African-American women who develop breast cancer are more likely to die from the disease than White women of the same age. Survival rates are worse among African-Americans for colon, prostate and ovarian cancers as well.

Frank C. Garland

#77. Yes, let's build a wall, but let's do it to help African-Americans! It's alt-right meets Civil Rights! The best crossover hit since "Walk This Way"!

Matt Taibbi

#78. The suburbanization and the ghettos that were created as a result of the limits of where [African-Americans] could live in the North [still exist today.] And ... the South was forced to change, in part because they were losing such a large part of their workforce through the Great Migration.

Isabel Wilkerson

#79. African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginning. Before the beginning.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#80. When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.

Leah Ward Sears

#81. These stark divides prompt a simple but fundamental question: why can't White Christian America understand how African Americans feel about the black men who have died at the hands of white police officers? To

Robert P. Jones

#82. I think African Americans are resilient and hustlers by nature. I think they need to understand that you can take that hustle to the boardroom, but it has to be an education process.

Daymond John

#83. Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

Dick Gregory

#84. The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.

Edward E. Baptist

#85. If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed.

Karl Rove

#86. It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.

Chris Van Allsburg

#87. One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#88. My father and I made genetics history. We were the first African-Americans and the first father and son anywhere to have their genomes sequenced.

Henry Louis Gates

#89. It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans.

Eliot Engel

#90. When you talk about evangelicals, don't forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans - well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical - will probably vote Democratic.

Tony Campolo

#91. Recent sociological findings indicate that while "whites have largely abandoned principled racism... they have not necessarily given up negative racial stereotypes" or "negative sentiments and beliefs about African Americans.

John Hoberman

#92. We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism.

Constance Baker Motley

#93. Socially, segregation labeled African Americans as less than human; the term "boy" itself, applied to the Scottsboro defendants even as they became elderly, implied that they were less than men.

James W. Loewen

#94. In today's U.S., it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office.

Salman Rushdie

#95. Groups like the NAACP, The Anti-Defamation League, NOW and GLAAD, will respond to derisive language directed at their constituents. The price paid by those who cavalierly chose to verbally disrespect the dignity of African Americans, Jews, women and homosexuals is steep.

John C. McGinley

#96. You know, we're missing so much as African-Americans and we should be concerned about what's going on in Africa.

Chris Tucker

#97. I'm the kind of person that when I saw a lack of African Americans in the apparel business, that was something I set out to do, and I lead by example.

Daymond John

#98. From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future.

Mary Landrieu

#99. People had their image of what a cowboy was, ... A lot of it was perpetuated by the media presentations of the cowboys in fiction and old Westerns. And because of the tenure of the times, African-Americans were left out. As a result, reality was distorted.

Philip Roberts

#100. When no other schools in the Southeastern Conference or the former Southwestern Conference would award them athletic scholarships, African Americans had been recruited by and playing for Texas Western since the 1950s.

Solomon Ortiz