African American Artists Quotes

It has been my personal experience that as I allow the painting to speak I become lost, it is delicious and at the same time frightening. The best ones, to me, have a life of their own. ~ Luther E. Vann

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time. ~ Dionne Warwick

I feel like because black Cuban artists don't have the kind of pressure to thematize race in the way that African-American artists do, there's more space for them to do their art without having to discuss it in terms of racial identity. ~ Rachael Price

You leave your neighborhood but you never want to forget where you came from," he says. "I have the best of best worlds. I'm street smart and book smart. You put that together in an African-American male and that's dangerous. ~ Anonymous

There's no question that O.J. Simpson had been a substitute white man in America. He had gained honorary white status. He was not viewed by many white Americans as black. He was not seen as the African American athlete who was rebellious: Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Hank Aaron ... He was accepted in golf clubs that were very tony. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

Dear Non-Black American,
when you comes to the United States, you become black.No matter of your origin. Stop saying you are Liberian, Jamaican, Belizean, Nigerian,
South African or Ghanaian. White America doesn't care about all that bull, that's why on the work application it doesn't give you the option to say Ghanaian or Jamaican, it says "African American. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

If you are confident you have done everything possible to prepare yourself, then there is nothing to fear. ~ Michael Jordan

One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since. ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn't occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that's all! ~ Annie Elizabeth Delany

It's unfortunate that [Louis] Brandeis was not able to translate or abstract his devotion to cultural pluralism and racial equality as he put it for Jews to enslave people and their descendants and to African Americans. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

Consider the statistics that African American Males are stopped by the police more often, convicted for crimes more often and draw prison more often and draw longer prison sentences more often than their white counterparts. ~ The Prophet Of Life

Let's face it many on the political right believe this President ought not to be there. They oppose him not for his policies and political view but for who he is, an African-American. ~ Sam Donaldson

All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake. ~ June Jordan

Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. ~ Henry Louis Gates

I don't think every African-American or Latino have the same body type, but, yes, that's been one of the excuses ... saying that African-Americans are too muscular or just aren't lean enough. Usually they say, "Oh, they have flat feet so they just don't have the flexibility that it takes to create the line in a point shoe." ~ Misty Copeland

There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people. The presidency of Barack Obama is no different. One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small. One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can't, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls. The gate is open and yet so very far away. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I don't see black people as victims even though we are exploited. Victims are flat, one- dimensional characters, someone rolled over by a steamroller so you have a cardboard person. We are far more resilient and more rounded than that. I will go on showing there's more to us than our being victimized. Victims are dead. ~ Kristin Hunter

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence. ~ Pearl Bailey

Slavery is a memory of something we cannot remember, and yet we cannot forget. ~ Bill T. Jones

Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Only Fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Proverbs 1:7 NLT ~ Eddie Johnson

I think the important thing to understand first and foremost about Michael Jackson is that he was the international emblem of the African American blues spiritual impulse that goes back through slavery - Jim Crow, Jane Crow, up to the present moment, through a Louis Armstrong, through a Ma Rainey, through a Bessie Smith, all the way to John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone. ~ Cornel West

Mayor Walmsley is using the typical Jim Crow manipulation tactics to deflect the blame and guilt. He's a classic racist politician with an ulterior motive," says Ora. ~ Shaune Bordere

Here in Africa mankind was born. And it was a woman ~ Carlos José Pérez Sámano

Black vintners in this country make some really great wines. Explore a wine list and you will find at least one of our wines in the best restaurants. Buy a bottle for your table, and let management know you appreciate them including a Black winemaker in their stock. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

Fighters find it hard to give up doing what they do best - fighting for a living. ~ Evander Holyfield

The North American situation, while different from the Brazilian one, reflects a similar complexity and ambiguity in the relationship between race and ethnicity. Whereas Brazilians have a great number of terms used to designate people of varying pigmentation, the 'one-drop principle' prevalent in the USA entails that people are either black or white, and that 'a single drop of black blood' (sic) contaminates an otherwise pale person and makes him or her black. Conversely, ethnic identity in the USA is, as mentioned above, not necessarily correlated with 'race'. At the same time, African- American identities are associated ~ Thomas Hylland Eriksen

There's a whole lot more to the African-American community than entertainment and sports. ~ J. C. Watts

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies. ~ Ishmael Reed

When you sit in America you miss the open plains and you miss the sound of rain and the smell of rain and the smell of the veld. If you're African it's different and I don't think one will ever become an American or British. It doesn't matter where you move, you will always be a South African, ~ Zola Budd

And while I definitely do not think that secular Americans have ever faced the kind of prejudice, exclusion, or hostility experienced by Native Americans, African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, or homosexuals, there is still no question that atheists, agnostics, secularists, and others who eschew religion are often disliked and distrusted, or widely regarded as immoral, or not considered fully American. ~ Phil Zuckerman

I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it ... I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it's an illusion to me. ~ Michael Jordan

[I] would argue that native-born blacks are so vastly less "African" than actual Africans that calling ourselves 'African American' is not only illogical but almost disrespectful to African immigrants. Here are people who were born in Africa, speak African languages, eat African food, dance in African ways, remember African stories, and will spiritually always be a part of Africa -and we stand up and insist that we, too, are 'African' because Jesse Jackson said so? ~ John McWhorter

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death. ~ Ned Rorem

I had not expected the gentle, tentative surge of gratitude I began to feel...for St. Paul's School, the spring, and the early morning. I needed the morning light and the warbling birds. I needed to find a way to live in this place for a moment and get the good of it. I had tried to hold myself apart, and the aloneness proved more terrible than what I had tried to escape. ~ Lorene Cary

Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I would not educate people in how to take my powers away. ~ Dr. John