Black Males Quotes

• What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.

  Bell Hooks

  People, Goal, Black

  bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.5, Routledge

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• The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency--indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman--but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.

  Ishmael Reed

  Men, Years, Class

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

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• There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.

  Barack Obama

  Keys, Hands, Car

  "The Obamas: How We Deal with Our Own Racist Experiences". Interview with Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, people.com. December 17, 2014.

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• I am a black male who grew up in the inner city of Atlanta and no one ever followed me in a mall. I don't recall any doors clicking when I crossed the street. And I never had anyone clutching their handbag when I got on an elevator. I guess having two awesome parents who taught me to be a respectful young man paid dividends.

  Allen West

  Men, Atlanta, Doors

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• There is a class system in acting just like in anything else. Black females fall in a category below black male actors.

  Debra Wilson

  Fall, Class, Black

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• Studies that bring clarity and direction to the black male situation as an integral part of the black family/community are unpopular, not easy to get published and very dangerous.

  Haki R. Madhubuti

  Community, Black, Males

  Haki R. Madhubuti (1990). “Black men: obsolete, single, dangerous? : Afrikan American families in transition : essays in discovery, solution, and hope”, Third World Pr

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• I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

  Ishmael Reed

  Men, Years, Black

  "A Conversation with Ishmael Reed". Interview with Reginald Martin, www.dalkeyarchive.com. July 1-7, 1983.

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• One of the burdens of being a black male is carrying the heavy weight of other people’s suspicions.

  Jonathan Capehart

  People, Black, Weight

  "Op-Ed: Shooting Of Black Teen Reveals 'Blindness'". "Talk Of The Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. March 19, 2012.

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• A black boxer's career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.

  Ishmael Reed

  Careers, Perfect, Black

  Ishmael Reed (1988). “Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper”, Scribner

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• I'm a black male, over 40, with no kids, living in the suburbs - they wanted to put me in a museum. Why did I move to the suburbs? I started watching Desperate Housewives. If comedy didn't work out I can always try gardening.

  Alonzo Bodden

  Moving, Kids, Museums

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• 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

  Racism, African American, Black

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

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• My generation of writers has been prone to premature illness and death, especially the women. When Black male writers meet it's like a session of the American Diabetic Association.

  Ishmael Reed

  Black, Males, Generations

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The criminalization of Black life was something specific to the United States in the post-Reconstruction period and there's something like it happening today with mass incarceration, directed largely against black males.

  Noam Chomsky

  Black, Males, United States

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites ... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, www.truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Baby, Color, Jail

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• With the black male as a teenager, where you're coming from the ghettos and that kind of stuff, you've got to assert yourself, be macho, not let anybody walk over you, so that's where all this unnecessary bullshit comes from - from egos. That's why there are a lot of fights. That's how come the whole thing with rap has been violent. It's because of the male ego.

  Q-Tip

  Teenager, Rap, Ghetto

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.

  Ron Paul

  Strong, Children, Men

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• It's no longer a fad to be down for the young Black male. Everybody wants to go past. Like the gangster stuff, it just got exploited.

  Tupac Shakur

  Past, Black, Males

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• The fact is, in the minds of many, Trayvon Martin received the appropriate punishment for a true crime: He was black, male and dared to walk outside. In life, young Trayvon was just a teenager; in death, he has been transformed into a scary, lurking, suspicious, prone-to-violence spook.

  Henry Rollins

  Teenager, Punishment, Scary

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• The cops drive by to do some more good deeds
  A young black male spits a sunflower seed
  in the air.

  Dred Scott

  Air, Hip Hop, Black

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• I'm responsible for what i did. I'm not responible for what every black male did. Yes! I call myself a THUG, because i grew up in the ghetto. And im still standing.

  Tupac Shakur

  Ghetto, Thug, Black

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• Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.

  Bell Hooks

  Fashion, White, Black

  Bell Hooks (2004). “We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity”, p.12, Psychology Press

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• I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.

  Bell Hooks

  Solitude, Black, Males

  "“There’s No Place to Go But Up” — Bell Hooks and Maya Angelou in conversation". Interview with Melvin McLeod, www.lionsroar.com. January 1, 1998.

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• I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

  Huey Newton

  Positive, Media, White

  "On the Culture Front: Music from the Underground, Part 9" by Chris Kompanek, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 12, 2017.

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• To me "King Kong" is a metaphor for America's fear of the black male. And to me that's obvious. All right? So I mean that was one of the first things I said when I was talking to a friend of mine after he saw Peter Jackson's version of "King Kong."

  Quentin Tarantino

  Kings, Mean, America

  "Pulp And Circumstance: Tarantino Rewrites History". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. August 27, 2009.

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• I went to the graduation the other night of my first great grandchild - he's 21 or 22; and right at the graduation I looked, and 92 percent of those who graduated at the University of Illinois were females. Where can a Black female, who are now the lawyers, the engineers; they are the ones graduating with top degrees; where will they find in a Black male a counterpart that is equal to them? We are filling the jails, we are filling the prisons.

  Louis Farrakhan

  Grandchildren, Night, Illinois

  "The Breakfast Club Interview with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan". www.finalcall.com. July 5, 2016.

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