Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.
The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.
I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.
Ajamu Baraka comes out of the tradition of the African-American intellectuals, the people who really been standing up for African-American rights and economic rights and workers rights.
Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.
My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.
African-American communities have suffered under Democratic control. To those, I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?
Many Catholic parishes were segregated prior to the Civil Rights movement, and the first large contingent of African-American Catholic priests would enter into the seminary in the 1920s.
I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.
There's no question that there's been a breach in the trust between urban - especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.
That's not an accident that Donald Trump didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.
That's one problem I have. Jews when they get successful they will help their people and some of the African-Americans - maybe I'll get in trouble again - they don't want to help anybody.
I think others may look at the uniqueness of my candidacy, the fact that I'm an African-American, conservative tea party Republican, and somehow race injects itself into the conversation.
I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of a manifestation of the American dream: 'If it can happen for him, it can happen for me.'
However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.
My African-American friends thought it was cool that I was racing. It's not like we had any role models out there to look up to, so everyone understood I was doing something very different.
Many African-American men are incarcerated. And so African-American women do carry an enormous burden. And traditionally have carried a greater burden than perhaps their white counterparts.
Most African Americans, especially the men and women from my generation, would accept the nationalist gambit that says only European Americans can be racists, which is an interesting gambit.
When I got my success I became decadent for a while. This was 2003 to 2008. I fell for tiramisu really hard. I've become more moderate since, because African-Americans are prone to diabetes.
I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.
I grew up in a house that was the traditional African-American home that was dominated by a matriarch, and that matriarch was my grandmother. She was tough. She was strong. She was powerful.
And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery
Too often, if you look back through the history of representation and you take the work of African-American artists, the work is on such a modest scale that it becomes sort of inconsequential.
I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.
It's profound to watch a little African-American girl light up when she raps as George Washington and she realizes that Washington's story is her story. That this history belongs to all of us.
Johnson Publishing has been built on filling a need for African-Americans. This is what's happening with E Style. There was nothing that addressed the specific needs of African-American women.
When African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?
Are things getting better with each generation? Yes. It's quite interesting to be living in these times, for me to witness an African-American being elected president. It's quite extraordinary.
I grew up a poor kid to a single mom, so as an African-American actor I have a responsibility to hold the mirror up and reflect our stories. I'm living the dream and also escaped the inevitable.
Funny enough though, despite what Donald Trump has to say and the way African-American people are portrayed so often in media, African-American people can have a leaning to be very conservative.
Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough."
My best friends - the people I trust the most - are Catholic, Jewish, African-American, gay, tall, short, blonde... you name it. I love people for their hearts, not their appearance or lifestyle.
I'm a kid who grew up in an all African-American neighborhood and got into schools and aspired to just be me, and didn't worry about labels or anything. Just wanted to be a success at what I did.
Indians were here first - it's about time. We're way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we're beginning to take a page out of their notebook.
I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is
For me it's hard, especially being a young African-American woman. My dad doesn't look like what you might call the 'safe' African-American male that America would accept, if you know what I mean.
When I was growing up and going to art school and learning about African-American art, much of it was a type of political art that was very didactic and based on the '60s, and a social collective.
I didn't have the sensibilities of your ordinary filmmaker, let alone your ordinary African-American filmmaker. My heroes were John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, and actors that were part of that world.
I didn't mind being in a school with a small African-American population. The African-American-community was very tight, and that was great. But I also wanted to interact with other types of folks.
Failure: Is it a limitation? Bad timing? It's a lot of things. It's something you can't be afraid of, because you'll stop growing. The next step beyond failure could be your biggest success in life.
When you get real old, honey, you realize there are certain things that just don't matter anymore. You lay it all on the table. There's a saying, 'Only little children and old folks tell the truth.'
I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.
We have to help African American people that, for the most part, are stuck there, Hispanic American people. We have Hispanic-American people that are in the inner cities and they are living in hell.
Years ago, I couldn't get arrested in commercials because of my look: 'Is he Jewish, Hispanic, or African-American?' I ended up doing voiceover work, which has been great. Honestly, I can't complain.
I think that whenever there's a good script we try to make that happen, but it's all based off of a good story, a good script, but I don't believe you should do it just because it's African-American.
The African-American tradition, in the main, is very, very church-based, very, very Christian. It accepts, you know, certain narratives about the world. I didn't really have that present in my house.
I am African-American, and I am a proud African-American. I just don't like to put myself in a box and say, 'I'm an African-American actress.' I am an American actress, and I can do any kind of role.
Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.
My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life - if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas.