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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 don't like perpetuating the stereotype of black males being drug dealers, and criminals.

  Wesley Snipes

  Drug, Black, Males

  Source: collider.com

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• I appreciate the female foot, but I've never said that I have a foot fetish. But I am a lower track guy. I like legs' I like booties'. I have a black male sexuality.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Feet, Track, Appreciate

  "Quentin Tarantino - The "Inglourious Basterds" Interview with Kam Williams". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

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• I think that one of the hardest things in the world to be is a black male. I mean everyone hates your guts. White men are afraid of you. White women are afraid of you. The cops hate you. The government wants you dead. Your own people want to shoot you for what you got. You just can't get over it. And even if you are able to get over it you're forced to do it on the white guy's terms.

  Henry Rollins

  Hate, Mean, Men

  Source: www.theroc.org

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• If Black women stand strong and our commitment is to ending domination I know that I'm supporting Black males, Black children male and female Black elderly because the bottom line is the struggle to end domination in all its forms.

  Bell Hooks

  Strong, Children, Struggle

  Interview with Pierce Freelon, blackademics.org. October, 2006.

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• The street is as diverse as any other sector, but in peoples' mind it gets appropriated as a black man who's tough. Trying to make it through by staying hard and phallocentric. To me, that is just an impoverished conception of what it is to be a black male. It doesn't do justice to my grandfather, my father, my brother - or just the black men I grew up with.

  Cornel West

  Brother, Father, Men

  "A conversation with Cornel West". Interview with Itabari Njeri, articles.latimes.com. October 22, 1995.

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• There were so few black men who were successful and who successfully conveyed black male fear - how America can make you feel crazy, and how America can create interesting levels of contradiction.

  Hilton Als

  Crazy, Successful, Men

  "Hilton Als, Constructing Genre". Interview with Christopher Bollen, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

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• Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

  Ron Paul

  Thinking, Cities, Justice

  Ron Paul's newsletter (1992), as quoted in "10 Extreme Claims in Ron Paul’s Controversial Newsletters" by Andy Kroll, www.motherjones.com. January 3, 2012.

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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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