African American Quotes - Page 38

• I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Views, White

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I don't want to exaggerate; having as many African American men as we've had in the criminal-justice system, and the amount of time it takes for the damage done by that to wash through our society and our communities, the disadvantages born out of kids being undiagnosed with mental-health problems early, or not getting the kind of exposure to reading and math when they're 4 or 5 or 6 years old, that carries a cost.

  Barack Obama

  Reading, Kids, Math

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I think if you worked at the community level in Chicago and then a politician on the South Side of Chicago, and worked at the state level, then you're pretty familiar with all the variations of politics in the African American community and criticisms you may get. If you're not familiar with those or you don't have a thick enough skin to take it, then you probably wouldn't have gotten here.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Community, Skins

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• 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.

  Barack Obama

  Community, Support, Black

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I don't regret the fervor, because I do believe, in the African American community but also for other communities, and I know from talking to people, for communities around the world, the election of an African American to the most powerful office on Earth meant things had changed, and not just in superficial ways. That in some irreversible way the world was different.

  Barack Obama

  Powerful, Regret, Believe

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• I deeply understand the history of civil rights and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our African-American brothers and sisters. I have witnessed it.

  Jeff Sessions

  Brother, Impact, Rights

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• To simply say that black people made allegations that substantiated an unfair and selective prosecution where you had more than half of the counts thrown out, where you had 27 counts where it took the jury less than four hours to find them not guilty - that speaks to fact that here we have three civil-rights activists, acquitted. What we have here is a prosecution that was baseless, a prosecution that chilled African Americans right to vote.

  Cornell William Brooks

  Rights, People, Black

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• 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.

  Patrick Leahy

  Worry, Decision, Marriage Equality

  Source: www.npr.org

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• 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

  Men, Survivor, Tough

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• 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.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Thinking, People, Slavery

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher, introduced us to some of the great literature of African American culture. I won my first blue ribbon reciting the vernacular poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in particular "Little Brown Baby."

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Baby, Teacher, Blue

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• When we were covering the 2008 campaign I told my young African American colleagues that despite the historical significance of victory, Barack Obama was going to break their hearts. They didn't want to hear that, and they refused to believe it. Eighteen months later they started dropping by one by one to say, sadly: "He broke our hearts." A couple of them even wept.

  Bill Moyers

  Couple, Believe, Heart

  Source: progressive.org

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• 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

  Thinking, Media, Racist

  "Dr. Duke on CNN: Hear the UNCENSORED FULL Interview Here". davidduke.com. January 5, 2015.

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• There are some dark days when I do receive some racist mail or emails. But overall the response to me has been very positive. Readers relate to me not just as an African-American, but as an American trying to make sense of her personal finance, just like them.

  Michelle Singletary

  Dark, Trying, Racist

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• My writing is definitely influenced by and speaks to African-Americans because that is who I am. I'm black. I'm a black woman. I'm a black mother, wife, churchgoer, etc. I am the legacy of slavery.

  Michelle Singletary

  Mother, Writing, Who I Am

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• My grandmother's grandparents were slaves. My grandmother Big Mama would tell me about the stories she heard as a child growing up in the shadows of a North Carolina plantation. It's only been in my lifetime that blacks have had the right to vote, live in certain areas or hold certain jobs. It is with this black history that I write about the financial challenges African-Americans still have.

  Michelle Singletary

  Jobs, Children, Growing Up

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• When I think of the Harlem Renaissance, I think of bright colors, and bold, dynamic art. African American artists of the period were, in large measure, breaking out of the constrictions white society had set for them. They were claiming and remaking their own images, and doing so in bold and striking ways.

  Nikki Grimes

  Art, Thinking, Color

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• We [African-Americans] are nearly half of all of the new cases of HIV every year, but we only represent 13 percent of the [U.S.] population. So, this is something that's literally bombarding our community, non-stop. We're such a small part of the nation [and] those numbers are alarming. We're putting ourselves in danger, we don't talk about getting tested and we don't talk about knowing [your status].

  Jay Ellis

  Years, Numbers, Knowing

  Source: www.ebony.com

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• 

  Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and for all saying... Americans. Let human beings be equal on Earth as in Heaven.

  Josephine Baker

  Inspiration, White, Heaven

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• The most important thing is to be happy and true to yourself. I don't want to look back at this in 30 years from now and say, 'I did it all to make them happy and I didn't enjoy.'

  Rihanna

  Inspiration, Years, Important

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• 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

  Past, Europe, America

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

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• And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Sex, Order, America

  Kurt Vonnegut (2008). “Armageddon in Retrospect”, p.26, Penguin

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• I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.

  Nikki Haley

  White, Rags, Conservative

  "South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Says She'd Turn Down VP Nod" by Cynthia McFadden and Amy Bingham, abcnews.go.com. April 02, 2012.

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• 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

  Years, Important, Different

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• As African-Americans, we often spend our time and energy blaming other people for the problems we see around us.

  Pearl Cleage

  People, Energy, Blame

  "Q and A with Author Pearl Cleage". ABC NEWS Interview, abcnews.go.com.

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