We As Black People Quotes

#1. ...I never once believed what they wanted us to believe - that we as black people are inferior to whites...

Darcus Howe

#2. Black people in America have come from slavery to other forms of being oppressed and there are some things that come with that - some pain and anger that come with that and we as black people have to deal with it to heal that. White people have to understand it and have some compassion toward it.

Common

#3. We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

Erykah Badu

#4. I marvel at the many ways we, as black people, bend but do not break.

Kristin Hunter

#5. I don't think that everything on Broadway relates to us, and I think that's why we as black people don't always go to Broadway shows, but shows like 'What's on the Hearts of Men' has a lot of issues that can relate to black families, and that's why I enjoy it.

Stephanie Mills

#6. Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we're never going to be successful not because of you white people but because of other black people,

Charles Barkley

#7. I love the fact that we, as black people, carry our faith with us. We share it and embrace it and love it and talk about it because we talk about everything else and why not that and that was the first impression that I had that really touched me.

Boris Kodjoe

#8. I learned a lot. I really did. Millennium is a state of mind. I always thought of Frank Black as the greatest chess player that could take random pieces of information and string them together into a scenario that was accurate. I never thought of him as a psychic at all. We need people like that.

Lance Henriksen

#9. Even though on the outside we glittered like gold, inside we were almost as black as coal. Sometimes the glitter people saw was only the shattered pieces reflecting among the broken glass.

Tracy Krimmer

#10. It was a warm and natural feeling to be there. We were not black or white people. We were just people bound together by love and understanding. As I walked out of that church, I felt like I had rediscovered my inner peace.

Nancy B. Brewer

#11. We were like a white family from the 1920s or something. My parents had this bizarre, different way of looking at things from the people that surrounded us. I went to an all-Mexican grade school and an all-black high school, and not many people in those places liked the same stuff as me.

Jack White

#12. My father identified as a black man. No one asked him because he was clearly black. But people always ask me. If we were together, people would look at us in a really strange way. It sucked. As a little girl I had blond hair and they'd look at me, look at him, and be disgusted.

Mariah Carey

#13. 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

#14. I love what the church offers to us as a culture - black people in particular. We would be nowhere without the black church.

Oprah Winfrey

#15. By the middle to the end of the 1970s, Black Power as we envisioned was a dream deferred. And I was no longer in a position to awaken the minds of the people about what was happening.

Junius Williams

#16. Now what happens?" asked the man in black.
"We face each other as God intended," Fezzik said. "No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."
"You mean you'll put down your rock and I'll put down my sword and we'll try to kill each other like civilized people, is that it?

William Goldman

#17. 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.

#18. I accept you, and you get the same respect from me whether you are black, white, gay straight, Asian, bisexual, Australian, tall, fat, whatever it is. We are all people, and I look at the people of the world the same way, as my brothers and sisters.

Nash Grier

#19. For as long as the power of America's diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.

Ron Kind

#20. For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.

Wynton Marsalis

#21. The Minutemen were seen as more of an art thing than Black Flag, although I didn't see them that way. It confused people when we put out Saccharine Trust, too.

Greg Ginn

#22. 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

#23. One of the most special things about the city of New Orleans is how diverse a people we really are. There's been a new generation of individuals that have all grown up together, so I don't really see myself as a White mayor. I've never seen New Orleans as a Black city.

Mitch Landrieu

#24. Black people in America will never be free so long as they're on the white man's land ... We can't be free until we get our own land and our own country in North America. When we separate from America and take maybe ten states, then we'll be free.

Muhammad Ali

#25. Ostracism means you don't exist at all. And that's a very difficult situation to live with. As gay people, we had been chasing ostracism by that point for probably 300 years. You just knew that you should have dropped into your black hole.

Harry Hay

#26. As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head white and black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate, mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all just chocolate.

Trevor Noah

#27. Nothing is out of our realm, because it has nothing to do with color. As black people, we're not different from anyone else, other than the exterior.

Marla Gibbs

#28. I think that we see Steve Jobs as the genius speaker in the mock black turtleneck with the round glasses, sort of beautifully delivering his new product, and I think that for people to understand that he started in a garage.

Joshua Michael Stern

#29. We'll put an asterisk next to Barry Bonds' name, sure, as soon as we put one next to Babe Ruth's name. Getting to break records before black people were allowed to play? Excuse me, where is that asterisk?

Daniel Tosh

#30. I think that Hollywood is content with condescending to Black people, patronizing them, feeling sorry for us, and I think we're happy to take the pat on the head as a people and take whatever awards.

Harry Lennix

#31. It would be a horrible mistake for black people to say, as some have said, "We don't recognize him ... " If you refuse to deal with him (Bush), the resources at his disposal will be given to others.

Charles E. Blake

#32. 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

#33. [Apostol Paul's] views were translated as, "Your rule is to be kind to black people; you don't beat them." It's very much the way we treated women in the 14th and 15th centuries. A woman was not human, and you should be kind to your wife like you are to all dumb animals. That was the mentality.

John Shelby Spong

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#38. It is hard to think of practical applications of the black hole. Because practical applications are so remote, many people assume we should not be interested. But this quest to understand the world is what defines us as human beings.

Yuri Milner

#39. The problem is, there is no geographical cure. No matter where we (Black American Folk) go, we are still too plugged into this place. Our cousins, grandmothers, aunts, nieces will be in this place. And the second we start looking at it as a "them" problem, we become another problem.

Darnell Lamont Walker

#40. I hate the term 'black' because it doesn't bring to life who we are as a people. The term 'black' has more negative synonyms than the term white.

Isaiah Washington

#41. We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.

Ron Paul

#42. But when the world and all that's behind it and in it seem black, I tell myself that self-respect and self-mastery are not everything, that faith and belief in the power of prayer are not so wonderful as what we call the ordinary love of two apparently very ordinary people.

William Fryer Harvey

#43. As long as we are not ourselves, we will try to be what other people are.

Malidoma Patrice Some

#44. The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black people, to black bodies in this country, the soul as we construe it is damaged, too - the mind is damaged, too.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#45. Latinos outnumber Black people now. I'm not too happy about it. Because it's only a matter of time before we lose our month. Soon as they figure it out, they're going to have Latino History Month. All we're going to have is Cinco de Negro.

Alonzo Bodden

#46. Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

Nikki Giovanni

#47. As black people, we want our story to be this constant ascendance from slavery. But it's not like that. You push and it goes up. Then there's a backlash, and if folks stop pushing, it goes down. Let's face it, it's a lot more complicated.

Stanley Nelson Jr.

#48. The reason we life black people isn't because they're black. We like them because they're not as grey as we are.

John Cage

#49. I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.

H. Rap Brown

#50. We were talking about urban youth. And by urban I mean lives in a city not urban as in black like white people use it.

Hannibal Buress

#51. Sadly, black people disassociate ourselves from the things which make us who we are, identifying them as lesser, or inferior. It's a form of self hate. So, with reckless abandon, we strive to be like the majority.

Nate Parker

#52. Sometimes you have to change the mold. If people keep following the same Hollywood mold, you're going to get the same thing. And as a Black actress, there's not a whole lot out there for us, unless we're creating it.

Kym Whitley

#53. There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!

Jody Watley

#54. Bipolar disorder is so swept under the rug as a nation and, I think especially, by black people. It's not our culture to go get therapy. 'Give them medicine for what?' We put people in court, put them in court again, versus really paying attention to what it is they are going through.

Trai Byers

#55. What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we loved black culture?

Amandla Stenberg

#56. As black people we were out to further our equality. I don't pay attention to the controversial connotations put on by media and the undermining labels they place on us. We pay attention to what our community situation is and what we need.

Chuck D

#57. We Black people cannot outrun our demons. Nor should we ever want to. We will embrace them as our lost Beloveds, and listen to the songs they sing to bring us through the darkness. - Walidah

Walidah Imarisha