African Americans quotes:

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  • Liberal whites are the greatest enemy of African Americans. -- James Meredith
  • The police killings of unarmed African Americans has got to stop. -- Bernie Sanders
  • African Americans watch the same news at night that ordinary Americans do. -- William J. Clinton
  • I think Muslims in particular are facing similar obstacles African Americans did, historically. -- Ibtihaj Muhammad
  • I was very fortunate to be able to represent an icon to many African Americans. -- Usher
  • African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us. -- Cynthia McKinney
  • We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism -- Constance Baker Motley
  • African American history is really American history because African Americans really helped build this country. -- Don Lemon
  • Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed. -- Lynn Swann
  • 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
  • Every day in America, African Americans are reminded of their race in ways large and small. Every day. -- Jennifer Granholm
  • I would argue that the objective evidence shows that big government is not a friend to African Americans. -- Rand Paul
  • Delaware State is no longer a college for African Americans without other choices, it is a university of choice. -- Michael N. Castle
  • We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness. -- Yvette Clarke
  • They say African Americans. I say black people. I've only been to Africa once. I've been in America all my life! -- Herman Cain
  • African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginning. Before the beginning. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • African Americans were responsible for creating a lot of this beautiful and elaborate ironwork; we weren't just working in the cotton fields. -- Philip Freelon
  • I think there are profound differences between the civil rights struggle for African Americans and the civil rights struggle for gay Americans. -- Christopher Rice
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • People of color, particularly African Americans, feel the stigma more keenly. In a race-conscious society, some don't want to be perceived as having yet another deficit. -- Bebe Moore Campbell
  • 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
  • The first thing I did [in Michigan] was join a picket line of a pizzeria in Ann Harbor in 1963 that didn't allow African Americans to eat there. -- Bill Ayers
  • 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
  • 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
  • To my knowledge, no progressive educator has ever suggested that children didn't need to know the "mere facts" about the contributions of African Americans to our society. -- Sol Stern
  • I don't think we're getting the empathy, and identifying with the situations that many African Americans experience. That's the problem with how the story is being reported. -- Roger Ross Williams
  • Blacks have no rights - in fact they were three - fifths human according to the constitution to give slave owners more voting rights. So that's African Americans. -- Noam Chomsky
  • 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
  • Bernie Sanders would say, "You still have millions of African Americans who aren't insured, and if we had a single-payer system, that wouldn't be the case." And that's true. -- Barack Obama
  • It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos, and women, who powered our victory in 2008, stand together once again. -- Barack Obama
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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 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 believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African Americans, Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race. -- Condoleezza Rice
  • 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
  • Indians were here first - it's about time. We're way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we're beginning to take a page out of their notebook. -- Ben Nighthorse Campbell
  • 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
  • I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp. -- Assata Shakur
  • [Donald] Trump is going to appeal better to African Americans, Hispanics, and others than previous Republican candidates because he's talking about what they want: a fair chance to have a better life economically. -- Jeff Sessions
  • 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
  • I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of guns going off, you know, guns held by white men acting as vigilantes, cops who feel more free to open fire against African Americans. -- Allan Nairn
  • 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
  • I mean it used to be, there was a time â?¦ when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage. -- Ben Stein
  • If you think back , the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated.We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it. -- George Clooney
  • 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
  • I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended? -- Judith Jamison
  • African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans. -- Xavier Becerra
  • Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that's chewing up. -- Randall Robinson
  • When you talk about evangelicals, don't forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans - well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical - will probably vote Democratic. -- Tony Campolo
  • People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking. -- Assata Shakur
  • It's unfortunate that [Louis] Brandeis was not able to translate or abstract his devotion to cultural pluralism and racial equality as he put it for Jews to enslave people and their descendants and to African Americans. -- Jeffrey Rosen
  • The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status. -- James Heckman
  • I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate. -- Michael Nutter
  • No one would stand for it [being the fool in the media] in a minute if you took any other group -Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, women - but somehow it's okay to do that with hillbillies. -- John Shelton Reed
  • The Afrocentric exploration of the black past only scratches the surface. A full examination of the ancestry of those who are referred to in the newspapers as blacks and African Americans must include Europe and Native America. -- Ishmael Reed
  • Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time. -- Michelle Alexander
  • What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset. -- Andrew Young
  • The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York, combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned, really turned me on to The Best Man. -- Taye Diggs
  • It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, "I have to work with whites. -- Michael Emerson
  • I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans. -- Jerry Pinkney
  • All the struggles that were fought for here in the United States for African Americans, you now enjoy the privileges of. You now come here and can enjoy privileges that were fought for by African Americans over several generations. -- Danai Gurira
  • The Irish were treated horribly, even here in Boston. For example, in the late nineteenth century they were treated pretty much like African Americans. You could find signs here in Boston in the restaurants saying "No dogs and Irish." -- Noam Chomsky
  • When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to other people, it's only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • 'Traveling While Black' is about empathy, what African Americans experience in traveling throughout America, and how it hasn't changed that much from the past. If it can be experienced in virtual reality, then perhaps some empathy can be gained. -- Roger Ross Williams
  • Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate. -- Alexis Herman
  • Typically, during recessionary times, particular groups suffer higher rates of unemployment -African Americans, and Latinos, and in some cases other minority groups. If you don't have a high level of training or education you're going to fall into that category. -- Hilda Solis
  • During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks. -- William Julius Wilson
  • Groups like the NAACP, The Anti-Defamation League, NOW and GLAAD, will respond to derisive language directed at their constituents. The price paid by those who cavalierly chose to verbally disrespect the dignity of African Americans, Jews, women and homosexuals is steep. -- John C. McGinley
  • Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row -- Danny Glover
  • During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities. -- Michael N. Castle
  • Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row. -- Danny Glover
  • America has been very open to immigrants in terms of laws, getting loans - it has been helping immigrants more than it's been helping African Americans in starting a small business. That's key, whether you're starting a restaurant or a laundromat. -- Marcus Samuelsson
  • What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah. -- Michael Emerson
  • The national media which I consider to be very racist against European Americans and I think they have caused the incitement of African Americans against European Americans.I also think that they have also facilitated European Americans being angry at African Americans. -- David Duke
  • I have a very personal interest. I am a Miami-Dade voter. One of the issues is that my vote and so many other votes of women and African Americans in Florida are being discounted or discarded. I want my vote to count. -- Patricia Ireland
  • The number of African Americans in my profession is woefully small; about two percent of architects in the country are black. I'd like to see more diversity. That's why whenever I'm asked to speak at middle and high schools I always say yes. -- Philip Freelon
  • Most African Americans, if given a chance, would have chosen to be 'just Americans' ever since the first of us was brought here to Jamestown colony in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed. But that choice has never been left up to us. -- Clarence Page
  • I think anyone that comes to Nigeria has to offer value. What value are you bringing? There are Black Americans here. I think we've moved beyond that Africans vs. African Americans. They may have more issues with us than we do with them. -- Mo Abudu
  • When it comes to African Americans and African American actors, Hollywood has always felt that if you can make us laugh, that's fine, but we don't need to see you do a 'Schindler's List,' where there's no jokes or music or comedic through-line. -- Hill Harper
  • If the Democrats have their way, African Americans will continue to feel oppressed, despised and handicapped into the indefinite future. All progress will be downplayed and every setback amplified. In this way, Democrats can continue to rely on lopsided black support at the polls. -- Mona Charen
  • Well, I'm a daughter of the great migration as, really, the majority of African Americans that you meet in the north and west are products of the great migration. It's that massive. Many of us owe our very existence to the fact that people migrated. -- Isabel Wilkerson
  • The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church. -- Simon Schama
  • Black Panther is a historic opportunity to be a part of something important and special, particularly at a time when African Americans are affirming their identities while dealing with vilification and dehumanization. The image of a black hero on this scale is just really exciting. -- Joe Robert Cole
  • For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware. -- Tim Wise
  • I do think that it's a responsibility when there are so few of us as African Americans to kind of get to that place of success in a positive light. We should take a stance and stand for something and use that platform for positivity. -- Misty Copeland
  • American high school culture was impenetrable to me, and very cliquey: you had the Hispanics, the African Americans, the surfer guys and the goths and the immigrants. The jocks and the surfers got the girls. By the time I'd got to grips with it, I'd graduated. -- Khaled Hosseini
  • I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people. -- Viola Davis
  • Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world. -- Johnnetta B. Cole
  • Just because a black man is running the RNC doesn't mean black folks are going to, 'Oh, OK, I will be a Republican.' Just as with the election of President Obama. All the problems and concerns that are very important to African Americans don't get solved overnight. -- Michael Steele
  • I know that if a team had a derogatory name for African Americans, I would help those who helped extinguish that name. I have quite a few friends who are Native Americans. And even if I didn't have Native American friends, the name of the team is disrespectful. -- Mike Carey
  • I say 'Merry Christmas' to people I don't know, or to people I know are Christians. I say 'Happy Hanukkah' to people I know to be or suspect to be Jewish. And I don't say 'Happy Kwanzaa,' because I think African Americans get enough insults all year round. -- Christopher Hitchens
  • I grew up in the '50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, 'Just bite your tongu;, don't cause any problems.' My father was not like that. Even in the toughest times racially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble. -- Gregory Hines
  • We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that. -- Noam Chomsky
  • While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did. -- Eric Holder
  • Although there are those who wish to ban my books because I have used language that is painful, I have chosen to use the language that was spoken during the period, for I refuse to whitewash history. The language was painful and life was painful for many African Americans, including my family. I remember the pain. -- Mildred D. Taylor
  • As N.Y.C. Public Advocate, I released a report that showed that stop-and-frisks of African Americans in 2012 were barely half as likely to yield a weapon as those of white New Yorkers - and a third less likely to yield contraband. Despite this evidence, the vast majority of those stopped are young black and Latino men. -- Bill de Blasio
  • My school was pretty much all African Americans, but it was still a little tough to be in because I didn't have a lot of money. And when I came back to my neighborhood, it was tough to fit in there, too, because I was wearing Catholic school clothes, and I had two parents, which was rare. -- Ryan Coogler
  • Ultimately, the main reason that you want more women in the sciences is the same reason you want more gay men in the sciences. It's the same reason you want more Latinos or African Americans; it's because if you come at a problem from a different perspective, you will be offering a creative vision that wasn't there before. -- Cara Santa Maria
  • This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution. -- David W. Blight
  • We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of "The African Americans." -- Henry Louis Gates
  • My sister is a good story of resiliency. She had a full ride at UC Davis, but she left school to go to the Philippines - and then she decided to go back to school in her 40s, which surprised me. She went to UC Berkeley, and I think she was one of two African Americans in her class at Haas. She's really impressive. -- Chili Davis
  • I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today. -- Willie Nelson
  • Hillary Clinton's done a terrible job for the African-Americans. -- Donald Trump
  • A grievance is a political action. It's not just African-Americans. -- Rush Limbaugh
  • African-Americans have rarely been the beneficiaries of Presidential rhetorical excess. -- Julianne Malveaux
  • The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans. -- Mary Landrieu
  • I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans. -- Geoffrey S. Fletcher
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