Top 39 To Be Black In America Quotes
#2. White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.
John Ridley
#3. It occurs to me if we kissed now, we'd be like a folded map of America. My Pennsylvania scab next to her New Jersey black eye. I wonder, then, how many other kids could join in. Where are the Montanas and the Colorados? Where is the Vermont? Florida? How many maps would we make?
A.S. King
#4. On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why?
Gurinder Chadha
#5. Where else but in America can a poor black man like Michael Jackson grow up to be a rich white woman?
Red Buttons
#6. I heard in my own voice the tulmult of a young man playig a role, uneasily, repackaging black R&B music from America, relying on gimmicky outfits, and pretending to be wild & free when in reality he needed to be looked after by his mother.
Pete Townshend
#7. It used to be that a man could keep out of trouble if he behaved himself. Now he will only keep out of trouble if he behaves himself, the police behave themselves, and court behaves itself.
Agona Apell
#8. Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
#9. I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#10. It's not that white guys shouldn't be allowed to engage in discussions on race in America. But there's nothing more exhausting than white male liberals' dogmatisms on race that were clearly formed during a conversation they had with that one black guy they met back in college.
John Ridley
#11. To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
Stephen Carter
#12. ... 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
#13. I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.
August Wilson
#14. I would say for every successful black woman in America or in the world, really, it's difficult to be the head of the household, financially. It is for the man in your life. It can be very hard for them. And there's a delicate balance. I'm not quite sure I know what that balance is just yet.
Jill Scott
#15. Calling for an end to hate shouldn't be treated as a punishable offense.
DaShanne Stokes
#16. Frankly, I think that's something that black people in America have often done - finding ways under very, very difficult circumstances to be subversive, but also to push things forward. And I think that applies to music. I think it applies to dance. I think it applies to a number of things.
Andre Holland
#17. Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.
Anonymous
#18. I think one of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative because there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn't exist about America.
Tim Scott
#19. I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America's first black president? Pretty cool, I bet.
Henry Rollins
#20. 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
#21. Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.
Michael Eric Dyson
#22. I didn't realize, when I decided to be a comic, that a black person had never been allowed to stand flat-footed in America and talk to white folks. It never happened before.
Dick Gregory
#24. It's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person.
Warren Ballentine
#25. We should be proud that so many want to come to America, that it is still seen as the land of opportunity. Let's make it a land of legal work, not black-market jobs. Let's make it a land of work, not welfare. Our land should be one of assimilation, not hiding in the shadows.
Rand Paul
#26. So if you're black or brown, you can make money in America, you can get rich in America ... but whatever you decide to do, it better be positive, 'cause if one person is harmed, you will be destroyed. You see Oprah, she just be giving away money. She's doing that to keep the Feds off her back.
Chris Rock
#27. 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
#28. Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.
Billy Porter
#29. I am proud and honored to be part of the America Supports You Freedom Walk to honor the victims of 9/11 and to support our men and women in uniform.
Clint Black
#30. To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.
James A. Baldwin
#31. 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
#32. It's very hard to be black in this country and hate America. It's really hard to live like that. I would actually argue it's impossible to fully see yourself.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#33. What I'm asking is will watching The Discovery
Channel with my young black boy instead
of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests
riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him
from harm?
Jennifer Givhan
#34. A lot of wars are fought between black and whites daily in America.But if it's something I want to be with, the people who started it were black, I wouldn't not get in it.
Muhammad Ali
#35. I always knew I'd be a millionaire by age thirty-two. In fact, I am going to be the richest black woman in America.
Oprah Winfrey
#36. There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.
Pete Du Pont
#37. I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, and that is marriage. I think, for instance, that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#38. I'm a black man in America, so I'm going to be misunderstood.
Tracy Morgan
#39. There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
Cornel West
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