The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.
Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.
There haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.
This is about black people selling out other black people.
If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere / and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome’/ because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay but not Black / Or I’m going to a Black poetry reading, and half the poets are anti-homosexual / or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me / The day all the different parts of me can come along / we would have what I would call / a revolution
Everyday, day & night, we hear the lies that September 11th is the worst tragedy, worst accident, and worst crime to ever been committed on American soil. We bear witness that the worst crime, the worst tragedy, that has ever taken place on American soil is not September 11th. It's not the twin towers. It's the holocaust that black folks been dealing with for 400 years.
Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have come to include all kinds - some Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives, extremists - some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are black, brown, red, yellow, and white!
You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.
It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.
No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.
I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.
You have to be very careful introducing the truth to the black man, who has never previously heard the truth about himself. The black brother is so brainwashed that he may reject the truth when he first hears it. You have to drop a little bit on him at a time, and wait a while to let that sink in before advancing to the next step
The truth is that in this country you here you're more likely to be harassed, hurt, or killed if you're a minister speaking about progress for Black people than if you are a sure enough revolutionary.
And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.
Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.
If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.
I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.
George Bush doesn't care about black people.
Black women have been cultured to compare not connect.
If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, `That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong. I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.
The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.
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