Top 100 Quotes About Black People
#1. In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.
Angela Davis
#2. I've always been a social network retard, even before there was a social network. People would say, "You want to go to this party and do some networking?"
Lewis Black
#3. On the one hand, there is no reason that a black person needs to live a portion of his or her life being concerned about the people of color around him. On the other hand, if you don't you're crazy.
Henry Hampton
#4. People are always going to, you know, find something wrong with people who are not the exact same as them. That's just what it is. Black, white, short, tall, religions, whatever. People are bad.
Chris Rock
#5. Even though sugar was very expensive, people consumed it till their teeth turned black, and if their teeth didn't turn black naturally, they blackened them artificially to show how wealthy and marvelously self-indulgent they were.
Bill Bryson
#6. I grew up here, and it's always been a very diverse community. So for people to come out and say that there's some long-standing anger or there's a history of racial tension is absolutely ridiculous. There's not a black-white divide in Ferguson.
James Knowles III
#7. People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things.
Claudia Rankine
#8. 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
#9. He believed there were too many black clergy who were selling heaven to the people.2
Clarence Taylor
#10. She'd read in novels of people who couldn't speak because their hearts were too full and she'd always thought, Not my black heart.
But now she couldn't speak, because it was too much, whatever it was.
Loretta Chase
#11. People missed things. People didn't notice; people didn't care. People's own misperceptions made black into white, made grey into whatever they wanted it to be.
Judith Ivory
#12. There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#13. For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don't like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they're babies.
Hilton Als
#14. We in the Black Arts movement, which wasn't really a movement but a group of people who had similar objectives ...
Nikki Giovanni
#15. Barry Bonds is outspoken. I think that the people of Pittsburgh felt, it's a syndrome of you've got to apologize for being successful if you're successful (as well as) black and outspoken.
Dave Parker
#16. It was an unknown thing, a lot of people had very bad trips and I like to be in control.
Cilla Black
#17. A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery.
William Julius Wilson
#18. But remember this: you're strong because of your people - not in spite of them.
Daniel Black
#19. The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.
Keith Stanfield
#20. I am not opposed to religion. Far from it. I'm for anything that gives people peace. That's why I am also for hot tubs and compact discs of whale songs. Anything that soothes the soul is fine by me.
Michael Ian Black
#21. She rode at the head of a shining line of black limos like the head raven in a convocation of black birds. Her husband had moved people, and, in so moving, had become their Lancelot Satterwhite, too. Something of him lived in them, was not hers, was now theirs.
Lauren Groff
#22. Everywhere, people are beginning to question masculine notions of control, aggression and black-and-white thinking - and instead are favoring more empathetic, nurturing and collaborative approaches.
John Gerzema
#23. We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.
Nelson Mandela
#24. When I get home and people ask me,'Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you. And that's it. That's all it is.
Black Hawk
#25. I am the least intimidating person. I think I would have done better in my career if I were a little more intimidating. Even the maid who comes to work for me once a week has found out that she can just trample over me ... I'm a Cancer! We are not ferocious people.
Karen Black
#26. I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.
Sidney Poitier
#27. 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
#28. Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office.
Edmund White
#29. The institutionalization of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, all of these things, led to a sense that the struggle was over for a lot of people and that one did not have to continue the personal consciousness-raising and changing of one's viewpoint.
Bell Hooks
#30. In the early sixties, the notion that racism was not acceptable even in certain regions or certain clubs or certain circumstances - the notion that it could not be treated with moderation - was a notion largely confined to black people.
Calvin Trillin
#31. Adolescents tend to be passionate people, and passion is no less real because it is directed toward a hot-rod, a commercialized popular singer, or the leader of a black-jacketed gang.
Edgar Friedenberg
#32. When you have the national narrative being "crack is awful and black people are using it," why go against that narrative when you want to get that publication in The New York Times or wherever? It encourages people to play right into it.
Carl Hart
#33. I spent seven months in Africa and came back saying there isn't anything you can say about black people that you couldn't say about, say, pink people except that they're black.
Larry Rivers
#34. People don't realize that when you're Latin, you're so diverse. I am black. I am Latin. I am Spanish. You know? It's a little bit of everything, and that's beautiful. So, everybody, claim me. I'm fine with that!
Joan Smalls
#35. Words have power. And I may be privileged and have a higher IQ than any of our former teachers, but when people look at me? They see a black, male teenager. And there is nothing quite as frightening to some folks as an angry young black man.
Michelle Hodkin
#36. Black trauma is never given space to heal because we have to make sure the white people who hurt us don't feel too bad about it. Even as victims, we're told to care about the feelings of those who harm us.
Luvvie Ajayi
#37. Look at the people who are kind of the funniest cultures, they're the cultures of the people who have been the most oppressed, black people and Jews. Not that they're the only funny people, but culturally, it comes from the pain, you know?
Sarah Silverman
#38. Jesus was not white, hey, he was a black man. Like our pig man, Mzwaki. All the Bible people were dark people.
Jonah Becker
#39. When a room at the CIA headquarters is secret, a secret from people who spend their lives creating and breaking secrets, that's some pretty serious black-ops shit.
Scott Sigler
#40. 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
#41. I didn't like The Wiz and it wasn't because black people were doing it. I didn't like The Wiz because it was a badly made movie off a classic. Why are you remaking something unless you have something better in mind?
Harry Belafonte
#42. There are so many aspects of human sexuality that we're afraid to talk about, because people still don't understand it. It's not just black and white, you know?
Sasha Grey
#43. Black jurors sit on juries every day and convict black people every day.
Johnnie Cochran
#44. There are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren't anymore. I don't know if that's the similar situation or that's the case for anyone that's black. It's a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that's the diff for serving in the military.
Rick Santorum
#45. At first, I didn't like coming down to Los Angeles at all. It's like, everything's black and white compared to where I live out in the middle of nowhere. There's, like, 400 people in my town!
Max Thieriot
#46. Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!
Kelis
#47. It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?
Donald Sterling
#48. The sight of so many guns, mostly deer rifles and duck guns but with a smattering of black rifles and riot shotguns, made him glad that this was going down in a rural area where people still had their heads screwed on right about personal defense.
Larry Correia
#49. Often young black people are looking towards the alternative economies. They are looking towards the drug economy ... the economies that are going to that apparently will produce some kind of material gain for them.
Angela Davis
#50. Whatever else the election of Barack Obama represented - some have called it redemption, others have called it the triumph of style over substance - it was the ultimate victory for people who believe that black political gains are of utmost importance to black progress in America.
Jason L. Riley
#51. Blackness is a state of mind, and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white woman. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community.
Halle Berry
#52. I don't want to pretend that everything is black and white, that people are either all good or all bad, and that I'm the one best qualified to tell the difference.
C.J. Redwine
#53. Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#54. I played on an all-black high school team and we didn't want people saying that we were clowns.
Oscar Robertson
#55. We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity black political unity is possible.
Angela Davis
#56. What I find astounding is that we've had a president who is black in office for the past eight years, who gets most of his funding from the liberal elite in Hollywood. Yet, there are not very many roles for people of color. How can that be? And why is it just now being addressed?
Stacey Dash
#57. I would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it is extremely important to look at the predicament of black people within the context of the globalization of capital.
Angela Davis
#58. 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
#59. People think of black English as ungrammatical, but it bears the same relationship to standard English as contemporary Hebrew does to ancient Hebrew.
John McWhorter
#60. I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.
Melissa Leo
#61. To prevent enabling oppression, we demand that black people be twice as good. To prevent verifying stereotypes, we pledge to never eat a slice a watermelon in front of white people.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#62. Homophobia is easier for black people where black people are concerned. They feel they have the right to correct me on my behavior. There is this notion that homosexuality is something that white people do.
David McAlmont
#64. For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being - old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.
Bill Frisell
#65. Go to the Black Sea, meet new people, see beautiful places, get killed by a mutant carnivorous kangaroo goat. One item off my bucket list.
Ilona Andrews
#66. I was never an R&B artist. People coined me one, but that's because, especially if you're in the States, if you're black and you sing, then you're R&B.
Kelis
#67. I believe I can do it, but one of the reasons I don't really get into the debate is people keep talking about a black James Bond: how a black man should play him.
Colin Salmon
#68. Some people talk about illogical things like love.. But then they can rationally sacrifice their relatives. - Sebastian Michaelis
Yana Toboso
#69. I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true. It's hard to say whether or not you're a believer. I've been interested in that subject matter, like lots of people. Perhaps foolishly, I've allowed some of that stuff to creep into my music.
Frank Black
#70. I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
Octavia E. Butler
#71. The truth is, however rich people get, they hate paying tax. Some live abroad for a year, or years at a time just to avoid it. Bizarre really - desperate economic migrants are driven to leave their homeland because of poverty; tax exiles are driven overseas by their wealth.
Clint Black
#72. I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.
Rita Dove
#73. When people who are not black are interested in what I do, frankly, I'm always surprised. I don't know if it's my low expectations for white people or what.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#74. I wasn't just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo.
Sherman Alexie
#75. Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#76. Life is diverse. Living is to live with difference. Anyone telling you that difference should be stamped out is stamping out life. Those people insisting that there are black and white answers to the difficult questions are stamping out the diversity that is inherent in life.
Omar Saif Ghobash
#77. I think of these qualities as metaphorical, you know? So black magic is whatever leads people to the dark side - their own greed or insecurity that makes them do destructive things.
Christina Baker Kline
#78. Black people dance well because we start early - there's music being played everywhere. White people? They don't start dancing until they get to college, and by then, it's too late; the bottom don't move with the top no matter how hard they try.
Tracy Morgan
#79. As long as there are people who are not happy with their lot in life, as long as the United States is perceived to somehow be the cause of this unhappiness, there will be terrorism.
Cofer Black
#80. She is one of those black people who want to be the only black person in the room, so any other black person is an immediate threat to her.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#81. There is an entire generation of young people who know nothing about how viciously the FBI attacked The Black Panther Party, and why.
Bobby Seale
#82. 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
#83. I do the same gig. I might change it a little; I might slow it down if I'm in the South. I talk fast, and they're not used to people talking that fast.
Lewis Black
#84. Everybody in the black community must organize, and then we decide whether we will have alliance with other people or not, but not until we are organized.
H. Rap Brown
#85. When I label something as fiction, people say it's true, and when I label something as non-fiction, people say it is made up. If something is not 100% true, then I label it as fiction. After all, there is no half of a lie, is there?
Robert Black
#86. The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies.
Samantha Power
#87. It's just what they are - they're jokes ... most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks ... I can't determine what offends another person.
Paula Deen
#88. Bill Cosby is a famous black guy who has a bully pulpit the size of the world; it's global. He puts his colossal foot on the vulnerable necks of poor people, and as a result of that, we don't have a balanced conversation.
Michael Eric Dyson
#89. Bernie Sanders has done a great job of, social media black kids know about him. Young black people progressives know about him. Through barbershops and barbershop tour that we have been on, we hit three barbershops a day. People know about him.
Killer Mike
#90. I love to cook, it's one of my most favorite things in the world. That's why I stopped being a vegetarian - I didn't want to serve people things I hadn't tasted myself.
Claudia Black
#91. I grew up being the girl who would always tune in to watch famous people talk about their careers, how they handled scandals and mega fame. I'm trying to pick up tips.
Rebecca Black
#92. The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men, and no one taught us; we just learned by doing what we saw, and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.
Black Elk
#93. 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
#94. All the lies, all the ways we have of trying to make life simple for ourselves by putting people into boxes marked black, white, good, bad, when all of us are victims of our own prejudices.
Julia Gregson
#95. Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.
Chris Rock
#96. Mrs Downs, a large sad lady who described herself, to Rupert's delight, as bulky but fragile, now came four mornings a week to clean the house. She was one of those people who habitually looked on the black side of everything with a cheerfulness that bordered upon the macabre.
Elizabeth Jane Howard
#97. Wherever there's a prison, for the most part, especially where there's Black people, it's overcrowded. I don't know who really gets out.
Terry McMillan
#98. I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#99. 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
#100. Anything that could be conceived of that would separate black people from white people was devised and codified by someone in some state in the South. There were colored and White waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know.
Isabel Wilkerson
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