African American Studies Quotes

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol. ~ Henry Louis Gates

The areas in which I teach are working-class history and African-American Studies and at its best the critical study of whiteness often grows out of those areas. The critical examination of whiteness, academic and not, simply involves the effort to break through the illusion that whiteness is natural, biological, normal, and not crying out for explanation. ~ David Roediger

Recent sociological findings indicate that while "whites have largely abandoned principled racism... they have not necessarily given up negative racial stereotypes" or "negative sentiments and beliefs about African Americans. ~ John Hoberman

According to a study conducted by the Oxford African American Studies Center, hip hop is part of and speaks to a long line of black American and African traditions. Many observers also make a connection between rap and West African griot tradition, the art of wandering storytellers known for their knowledge of local settings and their superior vocal skills. ~ Carlos Wallace

This is a landmark work in the history of African American studies and American intellectual history. Writing with verve, Jackson brings to life a large cast of characters and traces an ongoing conversation among the writers and critics of this period. This book is likely to become a model for a new generation of scholars, both for the breadth of its engagement and the depth of its archival research. ~ Werner Sollors

Malcolm spent much of May speaking to large crowds at church meetings and Sunday rallies, repeatedly emphasizing that the Muslims were not at war with the police, but rather that the police were at war with the Black community as a whole. ~ Mike Davis, John Wiener

At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably, the tragic mulatto can't fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I'm reading, and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I think I'm in literature,' but my life was never like that. ~ Soledad O'Brien

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

All people - African, European, American - worry about being different. But I've learned that the traits we'd rush to get rid of are the very ones that others desire. People always covet what they don't have. That's why we should look at ourselves every now and then and say, 'I'm proud of myself. I like the way I'm made.' ~ Freida Pinto

I've always gotten a positive reaction to doing African-American characters. ~ Tracey Ullman

The heavy warlike losses of the AIDS years were relegated to queer studies classrooms, taught as gay history and not American history. ~ Alysia Abbott

We are extremely proud to represent all of Radio One's stations within the Katz Radio Group. For the past five years we have worked diligently alongside Radio One to build their business in the markets we have historically represented including Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia , Raleigh and Columbus. At a time of significant growth in the African American consumer market the addition of the remaining Radio One stations expands our ability to deliver strategic marketing solutions to our agency and advertiser customers. ~ Steve Shaw

How much living have you done?
From it the patterns that you weave
Are imaged:
Your own life is your totem pole,
Your yard of cloth,
Your living.

How much loving have you done?
How full and free your giving?
For living is but loving
And loving only giving. ~ Georgia Douglas Johnson

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. ~ Ella Baker

Lucas, I never wanted children. I just want to be CEO. I want money, power, and on occasion, sex ~ Norian F. Love

Whenever a word 'nigga' is spoken, It's always followed by the same question, Can white people say nigger ?
and the correct answer is Not really. ~ Auliq A

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

I think the '90s is the reason why I recently had to find natural haircare products to allow my hair to grow. That was a time where they were processing your hair, and it was a time when African-American women wanted that straight hair. ~ Drew Sidora

African-American women account for 67 percent of all newly diagnosed female AIDS cases. ~ Elijah Cummings

It occurred to them for the first time in their lives that what's divine can come in dark skin. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life Of Bees

Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

By the end of October, the night riders had forced out all but a handful of the 1,098 members of the African American community - who left in their wake abandoned homes and schools, stores and livestock, and harvest-ready crops standing in the fields. Overnight, their churches stood empty, the rooms where they used to sing 'River of Jordan' and 'Go Down Moses' now suddenly, eerily quiet. ~ Patrick Phillips

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious objects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happened when captains descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth. The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth, the captain ... goes to this hole and rings a bell." The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitched their people and sold them to the white men." The myth was not so far from reality. For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? ~ Adam Hochschild

I have found that, in the African American oral tradition, if the words are enunciated eloquently enough, no one examines the meaning for definitive truth. ~ Mat Johnson

His voice took on a thick silkiness to it that made her want to press her body closer. "Octavia, you are welcome to touch any part of my body you wish. Just be careful of what you start. Once I lay claim to something, or someone, I will not part with it or them willingly." - Kade Egon ~ Sunshine Taylor Reddick

The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival. ~ Bernice Johnson Reagon

In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.' ~ Allen West

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. ~ Booker T. Washington

I think the most critical needs of the African-American communities aren't being addressed primarily because of decisions being made by Republican Congressional leaders. ~ Melissa Harris-Perry

Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back. ~ Chadwick Boseman

We invoke the words of Jefferson and Lincoln because they say something about our legacy and our traditions. We do this because we recognize our links to the past--at least when they flatter us. But black history does not flatter American democracy; it chastens it. The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge --that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

This book is dedicated to every woman who has ever felt self-conscious about her size. Outer beauty comes in all sizes, shapes, heights, ages, and colors. And inner beauty will always shine through, no matter what the packaging. ~ Raynetta Manees

When black women are down with you and in your corner, you have an ally that will move Heaven and Earth. ~ Tyler Perry

If you come to me and say, 'Hey look I'm a racist,' or 'I discriminate against blacks,' or 'I don't like you because you're African American,' I respect that. I can respect you more by doing that. But don't smile in my face, shake my hand, and then you don't really respect me, or want me to be around, or come to your games as the owner of the Clippers. ~ Magic Johnson

The radical philosophy offered, for many African Americans, the most promise. It was predicated on a searing critique of large corporations, particularly railroads, and the wealthy elite in the North and South. The radicals of the late nineteenth century, who later formed the Populist Party, viewed the privileged classes as conspiring to keep poor whites and blacks locked into a subordinate political and economic position. For many African American voters, the Populist approach was preferable to the paternalism of liberals. ~ Michelle Alexander

Everything in life has its price, and often the heaviest prices we pay are not in terms of money. ~ Raynetta Manees

We black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us. Take away all those stolen West African girls and boys forced to find an oral culture to express, resist, and signify in the South, and we have no rich American idiom. ~ Kiese Laymon

Sen. Joe Biden, on the day of announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, called Barack Obama the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright, and ... clean. I think we've seen the shortest presidential campaign in history. ~ Jay Leno

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness. ~ Ntozake Shange

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them. ~ Octavia E. Butler

The 'civil rights' revolutionary groups are a case in point. Their goal is not equality but power. The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of magic are control and power ... Voodoo or magic was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive. ~ R.J. Rushdoony

NEVER GO TO SLEEP KNOWING THE SAME THING YOU KNEW THE NIGHT BEFORE! ~ Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

I am a Black woman... Exquisite from the inside out. ~ Stephanie Lahart

I think I would like to see more roles for South Asian performers that are more inclusive and part of the American Diaspora, the American tapestry, perhaps the way that African American and Hispanic roles have developed. ~ Aasif Mandvi

You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards. ~ Ralph Nader

Be careful what you swallow. Chew! ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

In the African American community, we are very 'hush, hush' about things in our life. ~ Kym Whitley

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am. ~ Cory Booker

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. ~ Audre Lorde

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to. ~ Cam Newton

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

We've gone through the names - Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that's an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black? ~ Spike Lee

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 would like to see more African-American singers as part of our opera companies. If you take music and the arts out of the public schools, then you're going to lose a lot of people that you might have discovered were talented, very early. ~ Jessye Norman