Top 100 Quotes About Black Men
#1. Black men, you were once great; you shall be great again. Lose not courage or faith, go forward.
Marcus Garvey
#2. Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.
Donald Glover
#3. I don't think there are enough stories told about black men and their relationships and how they build and bond with one another.
Tasha Smith
#4. My thinking has always been that the worst problem we have with regard to lack of inclusion is the terribly low labor force participation rates and terribly high unemployment rates of young men, especially young men in ethnic minority groups and, in particular, young black men.
Edmund Phelps
#5. A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality.
Ishmael Reed
#6. No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women ... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.
Bell Hooks
#7. Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.
Ella Baker
#8. Governments would rather spend their money on another bomber than education, and why do we fear black men when every bit of suffering in our lives has a Caucasian face attached to it?
Jeremy Clarkson
#9. You know and we have about 60 to 70 percent black men in prison today and it's because of the negativity they have in their own hearts.
Stedman Graham
#10. Since felons are subsequently disfranchised, the US now has 1.75 million people disqualified from voting because of their criminality- 1.4 million black men have forfeited their right to vote, almost 15 per cent of the black male population.
Jeremy Seabrook
#11. While the Right of Suffrage is conceded to thousands notoriously ignorant, vicious, and drunken, ... a Constitutional denial to Black men, as such, of Political Rights freely secured to White men, is monstrously unjust and irrational.
Horace Greeley
#12. Because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying
Claudia Rankine
#13. Black men don't like to be called 'boys,' but women accept being called 'girls.'
Marilyn Monroe
#14. There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.
Toni Morrison
#15. We black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#16. We have multiple Black men and women losing their lives simply for being. Who gets to say you don't get to live anymore? I don't understand that. And it doesn't stop there. Can we go into the school system and look at the imbalance of what our children are learning? We are functioning crazy, people.
Regina Belle
#17. I like to dominate powerful men..Black men aren't good at oral $ex
Amber Rose
#18. Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand.
Combahee River Collective
#19. The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-1950s, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends.
David Sedaris
#20. For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others - for their use and to our detriment.
Audre Lorde
#21. 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
#22. America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system.
Henry Louis Gates
#23. The racial terrorism of lynchings in many ways created the modern death penalty. America's embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while ensuring white southerners that Black men would still pay the ultimate price.
Bryan Stevenson
#24. I'm sure no intelligent white person in his or her right white mind, want black men and women marrying their white sons and daughters and in return introducing their grandchildren to half brown, kinky haired black people.
Muhammad Ali
#25. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonnet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation ...
Abraham Lincoln
#26. Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society.
Angela Davis
#27. 'Strictly Business' is about a young black man who is learning about himself, and that applies to a lot of young black men, those who are trying to find jobs. This film gives them a good look at that situation.
Tommy Davidson
#28. I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.
Bell Hooks
#29. Black men, Indian men, and gay men have all have something in common: They do not provide an economic security blanket for women.
Warren Farrell
#30. Fully 60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But it does not,
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#31. So herein lies the paradox and predicament of young black men labeled criminals. A war has been declared on them, and they have been rounded up for engaging in precisely the same crimes that go largely ignored in middle-and upper-class white communities - possession
Michelle Alexander
#32. A hoodie is worn by everybody: kids, white men, white women, black men. But it clings to the black body as a sign of criminality like nothing else.
Claudia Rankine
#33. One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.
Robert Bly
#34. The gestures and the swagger and the attitude of black men is imitated everywhere in American culture, but people still find black men intolerable.
Jess Row
#35. You have little representation of young black men in the business sector, so you have children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods who don't hear discussions at the dinner table about what goes on in business. It's almost as if we have two nations.
Edmund Phelps
#36. When you see a black guy on TV, he's always a thug or always portrayed as someone that's in trouble. It spreads the message to everyone else that that's who we are. People often don't try to understand black men as a whole. We're creative, strong and influential.
Thomas Jones
#37. ... it has been very dangerous time to be a black male in America. There have been several high profile cases that have been covered in the national press as well as stories which have not. Many of these involve white police officers killing unarmed black men.
The Prophet Of Life
#38. The myth of black women profiting at the expense of black men is the oldest rap around.
Johnnetta B. Cole
#39. God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men, and brown men, and yellow men; God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#40. Black men of our day were never told, The sky's the limit ... We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.
Walter Mosley
#41. And his mind could not contain the terrible stretch of time that united twelve men fishing by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on their knees tonight, and he, a witness.
James Baldwin
#42. Now that we have a true leader who stands for family and has a loving relationship with his wife, maybe black men and women will follow their example. We have a lot of faith and trust in President Obama because his integrity thus far has shown us a new level of manhood, fatherhood and husbandhood.
Tasha Smith
#43. I think the biggest statement we can make as men, not as black men, as men, is to stick together and show how strong we are as a group. Not splinter. Not walk. It's easy to protest. The protest will be in our play.
Doc Rivers
#44. Black men should be with Black women. And they should love and honor them.
Runoko Rashidi
#45. Black men of Carthage, Ethiopia, of Timbuktu and Alexandria gave the likes of civilization to this world
Marcus Garvey
#46. In Chicago (as in other cities across the United States), young black men are more likely to go to prison than to college.
Michelle Alexander
#47. There are more black men incarcerated today than there were slaves in 1850.
John Legend
#48. Tons of women would love to have sex with me. I hate the image of black men as promiscuous and unable to control themselves sexually. I don't like that image.
Will Smith
#49. Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.
Aberjhani
#50. Racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has been a force that unites the two groups.
Bell Hooks
#51. When black men started bearing arms, these people who we think of as being pro-gun are saying, 'We ought to change this law.
Stanley Nelson Jr.
#52. Black men and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, inspiring them to follow their example.
Huey Newton
#53. I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.
Cicely Tyson
#54. I liked the fact that there were so many different representations of black women and black men in the movie. It wasn't like we all had the same agenda.
Sanaa Lathan
#55. You may be assured that we won't ever let your words die. Like the words of our Master, Jesus Christ, they will live in our minds and our hearts and in the souls of black men and white men, brown men and yellow men as long as time shall last.
Ralph Abernathy
#56. I knew, and every black man there knew, that I, as a man now white once again, could say the things that needed saying but would be rejected if black men said them.
John Howard Griffin
#57. In an effort to address the rampant joblessness among black men labeled criminals, a growing number of advocates in recent years have launched Ban the Box campaigns.
Michelle Alexander
#58. There were so few black men who were successful and who successfully conveyed black male fear - how America can make you feel crazy, and how America can create interesting levels of contradiction.
Hilton Als
#59. And just as you can find hip-hop lyrics beating up on all these groups, including young Black men themselves, the primary producers of the music, you can also find lyrics celebrating them.
Bakari Kitwana
#60. Conan mentally termed the creatures black men, for lack of a better term; instinctively he knew that these tall ebony beings were not men, as he understood the term. No
Robert E. Howard
#61. If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they're killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We'd not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.
Spike Lee
#62. From the beginning, the imported black men and women resisted their enslavement. Ultimately their resistance was controlled, and
Anonymous
#63. Well, of course, all of the statistics say there are fewer eligible black men in my circle. But I've never thought of it that way. I believe that if the right person came into my life that would have been terrific.
Condoleezza Rice
#64. Black men of integrity cannot make a deal with a politician and leave out the poor of the nation, all God's children.
Jesse Jackson
#65. My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
Cornel West
#66. Ever since the romantic comedy-drama 'She's Gotta Have It' antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups.
Lee Siegel
#67. Black men who have succeeded have an obligation to serve as role models for young men entrapped by a vicious cycle of poverty, despair, and hopelessness.
Benjamin Hooks
#68. Like myself, President Obama is the father of two daughters. He understands the obstacles that they face as women, but he also understands the emergency of the state of young black men in America.
Al Sharpton
#69. Black men - one might be the president. Well, America's in too much trouble - I don't want that job now.
Muhammad Ali
#70. Sexism has always been a political stance mediating social domination, enabling white men and black men to share a common sensibility about sex roles and the importance of male domination.
Bell Hooks
#71. It's almost like a lot of black people in America, a lot of young black men, are born with this cloud over their heads. It's their penitentiary cloud, this philosophy we all have, that it's harder for us.
Erykah Badu
#72. It's old white ladies, old black ladies, old black men, who don't even listen. Everyone else, everyone who understands, likes Snoop Dogg. They like my music.
Snoop Dogg
#73. As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
Maya Angelou
#74. Why are they picking on boxing? It's because the black men are so superior in boxing that they want to stop it. Well, the black man's so hungry he's got to fight.
Muhammad Ali
#75. So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.
Alice Walker
#76. The only difference is now more young black men are in the spotlight.
Afeni Shakur
#77. From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.
Alice Walker
#78. I was challenged to a fistfight by Margo Jefferson, the Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times writer, who is part of a feminist clique at the Times, which believes that Black men are the principal threat to the women of the world.
Ishmael Reed
#79. Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.
Bell Hooks
#80. Far too many black men who praise their own mother feel less accounted to the mothers of their own children.
Patricia Hill Collins
#81. I try to speak my points of view about black America, and how I feel about black men and the role that black men should play in their lives with their children and in their lives with their women.
Will Smith
#82. THIS IS THE HOUSE OF TARZAN, THE KILLER OF BEASTS AND MANY BLACK MEN. DO NOT HARM THE THINGS WHICH ARE TARZAN'S. TARZAN WATCHES. TARZAN OF THE APES.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#83. Sex and racism have always been tied together. Look at the thousands of black men who got lynched and castrated. The reason the Klan came into being was to protect white southern women.
Spike Lee
#84. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.
Randall Robinson
#85. The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture.
Suzanne Fields
#86. This research suggests that banning the box is not enough. We must also get rid of the mind-set that puts black men "in the box." This is no small challenge.
Michelle Alexander
#87. 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
#88. There is a genocide that is taking place among black men, in particular young black men, but it is not a genocide being perpetuated by white cops, by the Nazis, or by the Klan. Unfortunately and tragically, it is being perpetuated by other young black men.
Niger Innis
#89. But George Lucas is carrying about Black actors, about Black men, about Black history, which really incorporates and tells all of history. You can't take one race out without eliminating every other race if you're going to tell the story of the human race.
Terrence Howard
#91. I've never seen black men with fine white women. They be ugly. Mugly dogs.
Spike Lee
#92. So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.
Don Cheadle
#93. I don't know if there is a 'lack' of good black men. But when you haven't taken the time to get to know yourself, be OK with you, and articulate what it is you want in a relationship, then you can't possibly find that person for you because you don't even know what you're looking for.
Keshia Knight Pulliam
#94. I've gotten a firsthand view at the destruction that black men and black women not being able to stay and build healthy relationships has had on the black family and black children.
Hill Harper
#95. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash
Harper Lee
#96. Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act.
Marlon Riggs
#97. 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
#98. In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.
Audre Lorde
#99. The criminalization and demonization of black men has turned the black community against itself, unraveling community and family relationships, decimating networks of mutual support, and intensifying the shame and self-hate experienced by the current pariah caste.
Michelle Alexander
#100. I do not think this is so, because there is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.
Alexander McCall Smith
