Black Person Quotes - Page 2

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Black people don't hijack planes, alright? Now I'll be the first to admit, we steal a lot of stuff, but we do not hijack planes. In fact, in the history of aviation, a black person has never even attempted to hijack a plane. Do you want to know why? Because you can't sell an airplane.

  Alonzo Bodden

  Airplane, People, Black

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

  B. B. King

  Black, Persons, Hard

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• Part of the popularity with Louis Farrakhan has less to do with the content of his message and more to do with the form that he portrays himself - as being a free, black person who speaks what is on his mind with boldness and fearlessness. Who is willing to pay the consequences.

  Cornel West

  Black, Mind, Pay

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• I would hate to say as a non-African-American person that it would be wrong for a black person to direct white people in a movie. Wouldn't that be awful of me to say that? The only sympathizing thing I might say for people that want to [grumble] is that a filmmaker should have an understanding for the place where the people you're portraying are coming from.

  Mick Jagger

  Hate, Should Have, White

  "Mick Jagger & Chadwick Boseman Talk 'Get On Up,' James Brown and a Rolling Stones Biopic". Interview with Tatiana Siegel, www.billboard.com. July 25, 2014.

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• I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals. Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don't fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America. Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom.

  Juan Williams

  Education, Uncles, America

  "Rutgers rage against Rice -- why do liberals have so much hate for black conservatives?" by Juan Williams, www.foxnews.com. March 9, 2014.

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• I am a black person. I come out of an experience of exile and migration. I have always felt myself to be at once at home and away from home at the same time. It is inevitable that my perspective will be international.

  Kwame Dawes

  Home, Perspective, Black

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• One of the big mistakes they made in Europe is that the circumstances in which you most frequently read or hear the word "race" or "racism" in Europe applies to Muslims. Which is not a race. It is a religion. You can convert to this. You cannot convert your race. I could become a Muslim. I could not become a Chinese person or a black person. So they constantly use that in Europe.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Mistake, Race, Europe

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2011.

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• The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.

  Cornel West

  Running, Mean, Self

  Source: articles.latimes.com

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• I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

  Kathryn Stockett

  School, White, Black

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• I think everybody has the ability to fall in love with a man or with a woman or a white person or a black person or a Jewish person or a Protestant person or whatever.

  Ally Sheedy

  Falling In Love, Men, Thinking

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• Any successful black person will have to face suspicion within his or her own community about his or her loyalty to other blacks.

  Randall Kennedy

  Loyalty, Successful, Community

  "Kennedy Mulls Meaning of Being Branded a 'Sellout'". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. January 9, 2008.

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