Best 654 quotes in «african american quotes» category

I have 90 percent or 95 percent support in the African American community and it's not sort of "Well, he's black, so it's okay. We're not going to say anything even though we're seething." And I hang out with a lot of middle-aged black women, and they're not casual in their support of me. There's a lot of love forthcoming. Partly because they understand the constraints of this society. They know that this is hard.

I have always, or for the most part, identified myself as a biracial person. Much to the chagrin of a lot of African-American people that I meet, because it's almost like there's a betrayal, an intrinsic betrayal: "Don't do that, brotha, we need you. We need you here, in this fold.

I have been amazed by the Anglo-Saxon's lack of curiosity about the internal lives and emotions of the Negroes, and for that matter, any non-Anglo-Saxon peoples within our borders, above the class of unskilled labor.

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.

I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.

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?

I have crossed over on the backs of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Madam C. J. Walker. Because of them I can now live the dream. I am the seed of the free, and I know it. I intend to bear great fruit.

I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

I hope that more [African-Americans] decide to play after seeing the things that I was able to accomplish; not only myself, but other African-American players. Hopefully, they pick up a bat and a ball and go out there and play.

I have this ability to find this hidden talent in people that sometimes even they didn't know they had.

I identify as African American. I identify as Black. Black is something I share with other descendants of Africa, African-American is something I share with other Black descendants of America and both of those identities are of equal importance to me.

I have to go 150 percent or nothing at all.

I have written a song that says: If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words, "They're gone," and they'll come back.

I love "Phenomenal Woman." The experiences she had of being African American in the U.S. - that itself is a task. I appreciate the hardships Maya Angelou went through for our generation. I'm super influenced by the black people that paved the way for us.

I knew well that the only way I could get that door open was to knock it down; because I knocked all of them down.

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.

I look white to a lot of people. And I'm not. I'm African-American. I'm mixed. I like to call myself Mulatto because that definition fits. So, you know, I've dealt with the conflict my whole life between how I look and my actual ethnic and racial identity.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

I love the fact that a lot of my audience is people from the inner city. African-Americans love my films.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

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.

I'm also working on another independent film called Roxanne, Roxanne, about Roxanne Shante, who was one of the first African American battle rappers from Brooklyn. It is produced by Forest Whitaker and Pharrell [williams], so I'm really in great hands.

I'm asking for the vote of every single African-American citizen. You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs.

I mean it used to be, there was a time … when lynchings of African Americans were not that incredibly rare. Now the lynchings are the police and it's just an outrage.

I meet almost no one that goes to an African-American church or thinks, "I'm going to do that." Now there are whites in African-American churches. They're interracially married. They're highly committed. Maybe there's a professor or two, or a student.

I'm never satisfied with what I do. I always think I can do it a lot better.

I'm going to help the African-Americans. I'm going to help the Latinos, Hispanics. I am going to help the inner cities.

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.

I'm so tired of the left trying to divide us by race. One of the things I said today in my speech, we're not Indian-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, rich Americans, poor Americans. We're all Americans.

I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner.

I'm not offended if you call me an African American. I prefer a black American.

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

I'm the whitest guy you will ever meet. The first time I saw an African-American, my dad had to tell me to stop staring.

In 2012, African-Americans were 13 percent of the electorate, and 93 percent of them voted for [Barack] Obama.

Interestingly, a lot of the polling that I see is not along racial lines, but along generational lines. We are doing better and better among younger people, not so well among older people, whether they're African-American, whether they're white or whether they're Latino.

In 2012 President Obama didn't go anywhere near African-American communities. Why? Because unemployment was so high there, he didn't want to address it.

In every crisis there is a message.

In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.

In 2008, the Democrats made a great effort among African-American voters, and they did increase their turnout considerably, and among Latino voters.

In a one-hour documentary, you can tell maybe ten stories. That's how the documentary is structured. I wrote to forty of the greatest historians of both African and African-American history, and hired them as consultants. I had them submit what they thought were the indispensable stories, the ones they felt this series absolutely had to include.

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.

I never wanted to go on stage alone because if you mess up, who can you blame?

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we did create Color of Change, an organization which focused on African-Americans in particular, because we felt that there was a big gap there in terms of online advocacy which had left the black community particularly vulnerable.

In terms of addressing some of the most impacted communities and historically excluded communities - often of color, often low income - there is this adage in specifically African American communities that on every corner in low income neighborhoods you'll find a liquor store.

I stay connected in my head. I'm spiritually and psychologically connected to African-Americans. They are my people, and that will never change.

In the United States, the Supreme Court's decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans.