Best 654 quotes in «african american quotes» category

Precisely that, covering 500 years of African-American history in six hours. I've been working on this for seven years. The biggest challenge was deciding which stories to tell.

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can.

Racism is worse than ever. Violence is worse than ever. The economy's worse than ever. Unemployment's worse than ever. And it's Democrats that have been running the show, with the first African-American president at the top of the heap, and it didn't get any better?

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and . . . clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history.

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.

Senator Sessions has opposed protections for LGBT individuals. He's spoken out against Freedom Corps' marriage equality decision. He opposed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He opposed the nomination of Loretta Lynch, the nation's first African-American woman to serve as attorney general. These things worry me.

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

Silence is a sounding thing, To one who listens hungrily

Since Bush has been in office, African-American women have fallen behind in terms of income and wages.

... social evils are dangerously contagious. The fixed policy of persecution and injustice against a class of women who are weak and defenseless will be necessarily hurtful to the cause of all women.

Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

So how do Latinos feel if there's a big investment just in the African American community, and they're looking around and saying, "We're poor as well. What kind of help are we getting?" Or Asian Americans who say, "Look, I'm a first-generation immigrant, and clearly I didn't have anything to do with what was taking place.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough.

Something about the fact that an African American had, given the long sad history of our country, now become President - that was exhilarating.

Something that is interesting about the current polling is that, as you watch Hillary's [Clinton] numbers fluctuate, part of the reason that they are is because the Obama coalition, younger voters, African-American voters, Latino voters, they're not showing up in as large a number for her as they did for President [Barack] Obama.

STOP looking back!!!! When your past calls do NOT pick up!! it has nothing new to say.

Sometimes we have to lose our way to find out what we really want, for we often ignore our needs until we are lost.

Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed.

Stop using the word 'Negro.' The word is a misnomer from every point of view. It does not represent a country or anything else ... I am an African-American.

Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found - although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves?

Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).

That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.

That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and as a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, if we’ve progressed as a society, then you don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.

That's not an accident that Donald Trump didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.

That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires.

The African-American community has been let down by our politicians. They talk good around election time, and after the election, they say, see ya later, I'll see you in four years.

The African-American community is not monolithic. It's liberal and conservative.

The African-American community, the community within the inner cities has been so badly treated.

The African-American community still needs to come together as one and stand up for rights of the people and of what's happening in their culture, their community.

The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.

The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry.

The awesome thing about failure is that it is only temporary. Embrace it, learn the lesson and come back blazing.

The bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.

The average late-night viewer is in their mid-50s and the average viewer of TBS is in their 30s and is largely African-American and Hispanic, already, before I even get there.

The blues style - moody or rollicking or boastful or bashful - developed in the Delta around 1900 and was, for a time, exclusively African-American. That isn't the case anymore.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

The colour of the skin is in no way connected with strength of the mind or intellectual powers.

The fact is, yes, statistically, African Americans and Latinos are getting hit harder, but it`s something that we can have real solidarity across racial lines on, to raise the minimum wage, to lower the cost of going to college, to make sure there`s real consumer protection.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all written by affluent white males, but to discuss them in any meaningful way, you have to bring in the roles of African Americans - the enslaved blacks - and the roles of women, who were scarcely acknowledged by those documents. You have to discuss why slavery wasn't outlawed by the Constitution, why women weren't given the votes. The Bill of Rights isn't about dead white males anymore, and it's not just about live white males either; it's about every minority group that exists.

The fact that there aren't an abundance of African-American males that are getting lead roles [and] that are getting roles that have prominence on the big screen. [It's] the same thing from behind the camera; maybe even worse. Coming up, when you're black and you want to direct somebody says, "Oh, you're Spike Lee" or "You're John Singleton.

The fact that I was African American was never addressed, and that allowed me to just be a student, like anyone else. I was not aware of how rare it was to be an African American, how rare it was to have four years of training under my belt, and how, even though I could imitate people and fake it, unprepared I was to become a professional.

The good news is that the American people, not just the African-American community are saying enough is enough. You can`t hold people in custody and suddenly find out that they are dead. You can`t shoot people in the back.

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.

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.

The highest percentage of African Americans own their own homes today than ever in our nation's history.

The greatest thing to me about Obama is not the individual, it does not have to do with Obama himself - it's really about the people who have elected Obama. It demonstrates that people are ready for change, and I think Obama knows that, because he really came up from the people, the young generation especially. He motivated a lot of African Americans who never voted before to go and vote.

The [Hillary] Clinton campaign's recent travel schedule shows how seriously it takes this problem. She and her surrogates have held rallies in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland, trying to boost turnout among African-Americans.