African American Quotes - Page 37

• 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.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Jobs, President, United States

  Source: www.npr.org

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• [Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Winning, Thinking, Symbolism

  Source: www.npr.org

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

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Community, Patronizing, Barack

  Source: www.npr.org

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• Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible. You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there's some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Morning, Drinking, Home

  Source: www.npr.org

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• I would flip this the other way and say over 90 percent of African-Americans voted against Donald Trump.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Way, Flip, Trump

  Source: www.npr.org

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• 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

  Dog, Boston, Example

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• That's unfortunately common - to blame immigrants, to blame the African-Americans who are being helped by federal programs, to blame anyone available, to direct attention away from the roots of the distress which you're suffering. This combines with xenophobia, white supremacy, racism, misogyny, and other quite unpleasant phenomena which are far from being eradicated. All of this makes for a pretty dangerous brew. But economic issues are right in the center of it. And you can see this in the fact that so many former Obama voters now voted for Trump, or just didn't bother voting.

  Noam Chomsky

  Xenophobia, Roots, White

  Source: www.brooklynrail.org

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• There has been a struggle to reclaim the African self. That struggle has been on the part of a minority of dedicated African-Americans who never gave up our African identity at no time during our stay here.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Struggle, Self, Identity

  Source: www.ourtimepress.com

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• 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

  Battle, Stereotype, Accomplished

  Source: eldiariony.com

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• You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable. Of course when you're a candidate's wife and when you're first lady and the first African-American first lady to boot, that is very, very hard to do.

  Jodi Kantor

  Real, Wife, Progress

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The designation is useful and necessary and sometimes limiting but it is only limiting to people who think, for example, that African-American literature couldn't possibly be something they could be interested in or relate to. They have limited imaginations, which is sad.

  Roxane Gay

  Thinking, People, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I am fine with my books being categorized as African-American literature but I hope they are also considered Haitian-American literature and American literature. All of these things are part of who I am and what I write.

  Roxane Gay

  Book, Writing, Who I Am

  Source: therumpus.net

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• People who are overweight face discrimination. African-Americans face discrimination. Women face discrimination and sexism. So I don't have the luxury of not being tolerant of anyone.

  Octavia Spencer

  Luxury, People, Faces

  Source: www.npr.org

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• We all remember that [Donald] Trump was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement trying to delegitimize the presidency of our first African-American president Barack Obama, which is an outrage.

  John Lewis

  Leader, President, Trying

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• If you want to get at African American poverty, the income gap, wealth gap, achievement gap, that the most important thing is to make sure that the society as a whole does right by people who are poor, are working class, are aspiring to a better life for their kids.

  Barack Obama

  Kids, Class, People

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• Higher minimum wages, full-employment programs, early-childhood education: Those kinds of programs are, by design, universal, but by definition, because they are helping folks who are in the worst economic situations, are most likely to disproportionately impact and benefit African Americans. They also have the benefit of being sellable to a majority of the body politic.

  Barack Obama

  Impact, Design, Childhood

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• The same would be true for something like Social Security, where historically, if you just read the law and the fact that it excluded domestic workers or agricultural workers, you might not see race in it, unless you knew that that covered a huge chunk of African Americans, particularly in the South.

  Barack Obama

  Race, Law, Would Be

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• Reinvigorating the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, making sure that in our Department of Education, where we see evidence of black boys being suspended at substantially higher rates than white boys for the same behavior, in the absence of that kind of rigorous enforcement of the nondiscrimination principle, then the long-standing biases that I believe have weakened, but are still clearly present in our society, assert themselves in ways that usually disadvantage African Americans.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Boys, Rights

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• How do we in the African American community build a culture in which we are saying to our kids, "Here's what it takes to succeed. Here's the sacrifices you need to make to be able to get ahead. Here's how we support each other. Here's how we look out for each other."

  Barack Obama

  Kids, Sacrifice, Support

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• 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."

  Barack Obama

  Community, Asian, Generations

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader's ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Children, People

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• Let's also say that the Justice Department and the courts are making sure, as I've said in a speech before, that when Jamal sends his résumé in, he's getting treated the same as when Johnny sends his résumé in.Now, are we going to have suddenly the same number of CEOs, billionaires, etc., as the white community? In 10 years? Probably not, maybe not even in 20 years. But I guarantee you that we would be thriving, we would be succeeding. We wouldn't have huge numbers of young African American men in jail.

  Barack Obama

  Men, Years, White

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• It requires enormous energy for us to cut the African American uninsured rate by a third. A lot of scars.

  Barack Obama

  Cutting, Energy, Scar

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• 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

  Cases, Stills, Ifs

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• Let's say hypothetically, knowing what we know now about public policy, that we could close the education gap so that it was only a couple percentage points, and we could make sure that hiring barriers and educational barriers had been leveled down, and unemployment among African Americans right now instead of being double was only 10 percent higher than white unemployment - if we got to that point , America as a whole would be a lot richer.

  Barack Obama

  Couple, Educational, White

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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