Black Person Quotes - Page 2

• When you get called the n-word, as a black person you can do anything. It's like getting a gold star in Super Mario Brothers and junk. I hear the music when I hear the n-word. I get right into it; I get really into it. You can do anything. You could be in a fancy restaurant - just start throwing poop at the walls. People be like, 'What are you doing?' 'Someone called him the n-word.

  Donald Glover

  Brother, Stars, Wall

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• The greatest hope most Americans - including Republicans - had when Barack Obama was elected president was that the election of a black person as the country's president would reduce, if not come close to eliminating, the racial tensions that have plagued America for generations.

  Dennis Prager

  Country, America, Black

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• I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

  Alice Walker

  Mean, Thinking, America

  "'Democratic Womanism': Poet and Activist Alice Walker on Women Rising, Obama and the 2012 Election". "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. September 28, 2012.

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• As a black person I am no stranger to prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far more often discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Political, Black, Prejudice

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• Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person.

  B. B. King

  Black, Persons, Hard

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• Any Black person in amerika [sic], if they are being honest with themselves, have got to come to the conclusion that they don't know what it feels like to be free. We aren't free politically, economically, or socially. We have very little power over what happens in our lives. In fact, a Black person isn't free to walk down the street. Walk down the wrong street, in the wrong neighborhood at night, and you know what happens.

  Assata Shakur

  Night, Black, Littles

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• As a black person in America, I am twice as likely as a white person to live in an area where air pollution poses the greatest risk to my health. I am five times more likely to live within walking distance of a power plant or chemical facility, which I do.

  Majora Carter

  Motivation, Distance, Inspiration

  "Greening the ghetto". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February 2006.

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• When a black person has no electricity, no water, they call it the ghetto. When white people have no electricity and no water, they call it camping.

  Carlos Mencia

  Ghetto, White, People

  "Mind of Mencia", www.imdb.com. (2005-).

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• It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now.

  Jimi Hendrix

  Kids, Black And White, Thinking

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• There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary.

  Kathryn Stockett

  Winning, Two, White

  Kathryn Stockett (2011). “The Help”, p.688, Penguin UK

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• When I started the diamond business, no black person, period, was in it to do what we're trying to do to change the industry. So I like to do things that I see clearly that are in my, you know, scope. And then, I had to figure how I get talented or smart business people around me to execute. That's what I have to do.

  Russell Simmons

  Smart, People, Black

  "Does Russell Simmons Serve Hip-Hop?". "News & Notes" with Farai Chideya, www.npr.org. June 4, 2007.

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• My dad worked two jobs and moved us to the suburbs, and just being a black person, I went through a lot of racism and being called names and being bullied every single day. And it was hard. I didn't have any friends.

  Sherri Shepherd

  Jobs, Dad, Names

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• I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

  Sidney Poitier

  Moving, People, Black

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• No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.

  Jimmy Carter

  Education, Jobs, Opportunity

  Jimmy Carter (2016). “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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• Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.

  Bell Hooks

  Educational, Heart, Thinking

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• I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

  Toni Morrison

  Thinking, People, Black

  "Disagree with me - but not because I'm a black woman" by Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2011.

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• The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

  Jean-Michel Basquiat

  People, Black, Painting

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• I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.

  Cornel West

  Believe, Black, Criticism

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• I don't trust white critics' judgment about most things that deal with black life, particularly when a black person is the creator.

  Terry McMillan

  White, Black, Judgment

  Spike Lee, Terry McMillan (1991). “Five for five: the films of Spike Lee”, Stewart Tabori & Chang

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• It's very funny, American society: White culture can do all sorts of things and get away with it, but the minute a black person does it, it's interpreted in some way.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  White, Black, Doe

  "'Our Sassy Black Friend' Jamaica Kincaid". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2013.

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• I didn't realize, when I decided to be a comic, that a black person had never been allowed to stand flat-footed in America and talk to white folks. It never happened before.

  Dick Gregory

  White, America, Black

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• Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

  Bell Hooks

  Teaching, School, White

  bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.51, Routledge

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• What is the problem with the advertising industry is they're still, for me, what I call in Africa is the colonial mind of white men, because the black person or the other colour is out of the line. They're not good for this sort of purpose.

  Berhan Ahmed

  Men, White Man, Black

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, 'We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here - have a nice day!'

  Michael Moore

  Movie, Jobs, Nice

  "Stupid White Men ...and Other Excuses For the State of the Nation!". Book by Michael Moore, 2001.

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• Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born.

  Ketch Secor

  Country, Song, White

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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