African American quotes:

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The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way. -- Stephen Ambrose
African American children can't be educationally disadvantaged for 12 years and then experience a miracle cure when it comes time for admission into college. -- Chaka Fattah
As an African American actress there are people who have been staples in my life that opened a door that I can walk through. I hope that I can have that impact. -- Monique Coleman
For I am my mother's daughter, and... -- Mary McLeod Bethune
Michael Jackson National African American Art Examiner Series -- Aberjhani
Hate is too great a burden to bear.... -- Coretta Scott King
we are the ones we have been waiting for -- Alice Walker
Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans. -- James Meredith
Hollywood needs to recognise all shades of African American beauty. -- Gabrielle Union
I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American. -- Larry Bird
I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon, -- Kendrick Lamar
A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. -- Malcolm X
I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist. -- Nat King Cole
The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry. -- Lance Reddick
Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it! -- Maya Angelou
It isn't where you came from, its where you're going that counts. -- Ella Fitzgerald
We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society. -- Angela Davis
African Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do. -- William J. Clinton
Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double. -- Chaka Fattah
Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music. -- Michael Eric Dyson
I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process. -- Oprah Winfrey
African American history is really American history because African Americans really helped build this country. -- Don Lemon
I'm not offended if you call me an African American. I prefer a black American. -- Herman Cain
African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us. -- Cynthia McKinney
In the African American community, we are very 'hush, hush' about things in our life. -- Kym Whitley
Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller). -- Rush Limbaugh
Diabetes occurs at twice the rate in the African American community as it does in white Americans. -- Xavier Becerra
The highest percentage of African Americans own their own homes today than ever in our nation's history. -- Ed Gillespie
The people who suffer in the Obama economy have been young people, African Americans, Hispanics, single moms. -- Ted Cruz
The people who suffer in the Obama economy have been young people, African Americans, Hispanics, single moms." -- Ted Cruz
Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed. -- Lynn Swann
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. -- Audre Lorde
People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors, -- Torii Hunter
Delaware State is no longer a college for African Americans without other choices, it is a university of choice. -- Michael N. Castle
America is ready to elect its first African American President, especially one with light-skin and and no Negro dialect. -- Mitch McConnell
The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies. -- Ishmael Reed
There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large. -- Jack Kemp
To understand how Republicans lost the African American vote, we must first understand how we won the African American vote. -- Rand Paul
It requires enormous energy for us to cut the African American uninsured rate by a third. A lot of scars. -- Barack Obama
I sometimes wish I were African American because people don't bash them afterward. It's the hardest to be a woman. -- Julie Delpy
This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president. -- Jennifer Granholm
If we can elect an African American as president, we can support gay marriage! Defeat prop 8! We will not give up! -- Madonna Ciccone
I would love to get a role that changes the landscape of being an African American woman in television and film. -- Candice Patton
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness. -- Yvette Clarke
African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginning. Before the beginning. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates
People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic. -- Janice Dickinson
I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that's how I operate my life. -- Oprah Winfrey
The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time. -- Dionne Warwick
Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team. -- Bob Cousy
I always say African American history is the quintessential American story. It's about perseverance and resilience - something everyone can relate to. -- Philip Freelon
For starters, Portland isn't a great city to live in if you're a young, African American male with a lot of money, -- Greg Oden
This is, for an accomplished Latino, an accomplished African American, an accomplished anyone who disproves stereotypes, it's a constant battle in your life. -- Sonia Sotomayor
I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships. -- Tim Robbins
African Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem. -- Bebe Moore Campbell
The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs. -- Dave Barry
If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person. -- Daryl Hall
Housing programs designed to help young families and senior citizens purchase homes should be available to people of all races, including African Americans. -- Loretta Lynch
The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans. -- Hugh Masekela
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
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
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
It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American. -- Utkarsh Ambudkar
I was well known to African Americans before Bill Clinton discovered me. He was like Christopher Columbus riding up on something he didn't understand. -- Sister Souljah
According to the American Heart Association, the prevalence of hypertension in African Americans in the United States is among the highest in the world. -- Xavier Becerra
And when the time is right, I hope that African Americans will again look to the party of emancipation, civil liberty, and individual freedom. -- Rand Paul
I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood. -- Denzel Washington
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
Does this mean that in some places I'm American and in some places I'm African American and in other places, by logical extension, I'm nobody? -- Roberto Bolano
I was looking for excellence in any color or gender it comes in. Some of my top people are African American but not all of them. -- T. D. Jakes
There are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began. -- Michelle Alexander
I want to be the voice for those people who are going through the same thing, like little African American boys and girls getting bullied at school. -- Normani Hamilton
I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback. -- Robert Griffin III
People have been killing because of racial differences since the time of Adam and Eve, but in this country racism has been primarily aimed at African Americans. -- Bob Cousy
I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation. -- Rand Paul
To be a survivor as an African American man - maybe any man - you have to be pretty tough. Or at least that's what we all understand. -- John Edgar Wideman
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
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
Most African Americans, especially the men and women from my generation, would accept the nationalist gambit that says only European Americans can be racists, which is an interesting gambit. -- Anthony Braxton
However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects. -- William Labov
I think, though, as African-American women, we are always trained to value our community even at the expense of ourselves, and so we attempt to protect the African-American community. -- Anita Hill
I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American. -- Jimmy Carter
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. -- Zora Neale Hurston
Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view. -- Ving Rhames
Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself. -- J. C. Watts
We've gone through the names?Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that's an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black? -- Spike Lee
Michael Joseph Jackson's genius was the ability to be the raw article himself - the real article himself. He is part of the African American people who were marginalized. -- Michael Eric Dyson
In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died. -- Bobby Scott
The adoring crowds and overwhelming Democratic support in the 2008 election was based largely on joy at jettisoning Bush and the appeal of electing a superbly qualified charismatic African American leader. -- Mary Frances Berry
I think young people don't really know that much about the Civil Rights Movement and about the history of African Americans in this country. It's not taught enough in school. -- Don Lemon
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
I don't do stuff to be a star. I do it because I feel it's important for kids, African American kids, to see an African American face that plays baseball. -- Matt Kemp
Obama's a great speaker. Because of his speaking ability and his appearance, a lot of guys got on board. Being the first African American, a lot guys got on board. -- Pete Rose
We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there. -- Norman Lear
I'm African American, I'm a lot of other things, a musician and an artist. But that woman part holds the most pain for me. And therefore, obviously, the most lessons. -- India.Arie
It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century. -- William Labov
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
I only became an actor to get your attention, to challenge the archetype of an African American male; I can't be anything else in this lifetime than an African American man. -- Isaiah Washington
We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls. -- Janelle Monae
In the past the great majority of minority voters, in Ohio and other places that means African American voters, cast a large percentage of their votes during the early voting process. -- John Lewis
I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud to be an African American in America. I've had some interesting experiences: some great, some not so great, but I love it here. -- Wesley Snipes
African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently. -- Lynn Nottage
I feel like I come from a smaller off shoot of black people because I am mixed. People say I'm African American but that doesn't include the other half of me. -- Maya Rudolph
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
Journalists become candidates for cardiac arrest when they see or hear an African American disagreeing with an African American. We would become inauthentic if we did not have disagreements with this president. -- John Conyers
Ending the lawlessness at the border? I don't believe a fourth-generation Hispanic thinks that's evil. I don't think an African American thinks there's anything wrong with protecting their jobs for a change. -- Jeff Sessions
As an African American actress, there are people who have been staples in my life that opened a door that I can walk through. I hope that I can have that impact. -- Monique Coleman
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time. -- Bobby McFerrin
[Michael] Brown's mom, Lesley McSpadden, is the latest African American mother whose tear-streaked face forces the nation to remember the name of yet another unarmed black teenager gunned down under questionable circumstances. -- Jonathan Capehart
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
As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn't as good as a white child. -- Coretta Scott King
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
The president is not doing well with African Americans. His popularity rating - his approval rating - with blacks: two percent. Two percent. That is somewhere between Mark Fuhrman and sickle cell anemia. -- Bill Maher
America is not perfect. It took a bloody civil war to free over 4 million African Americans who lived enslaved. It took another hundred years after that before they achieved full equality under the law. -- Marco Rubio
An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write. -- William Labov
My intention is not to repudiate an African American identity but perhaps to resist how labels take hold, or to make it as slow a process as possible. That's more my sense of it. -- Mark McMorris
Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger. -- Michael N. Castle
When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor. -- Lee Grant
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is. -- Edward James Olmos

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