Black Boys Quotes

Educated children walked in single file on the right side of the hallway, raised their hands to use the lavatory, and carried the lavatory pass when en route. Educated children never offered excuses - certainly not childhood itself. The world had no time for the childhoods of black boys and girls. How could the schools? Algebra, Biology, and English were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body, ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

And I know that there are black boys and black girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in the doldrums of America, some of them treading and some of them drowning, never feeling and never forgetting. The most precious thing I had then is the most precious thing I have now - my own curiosity. That is the thing I knew, even in the classroom, they could not take from me. That is the thing that buoyed me and eventually plucked me from the sea. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are. ~ Toni Morrison

I lie in a bathtub of cold water, still sweating and singing love songs to myself. I put the gun to my head and cock it.
I think of my Grandma and remember that old feeling of being so in love that nothing matters except seeing and being seen by her. I drop the gun to my chest. I'm so sad and I can't really see a way out of what I'm feeling but I'm leaning on memory for help. Faster. Slower. I think I want to hurt myself more than I'm already hurting. I'm not the smartest boy in the world by a long shot, but even in my funk I know that easy remedies like eating your way out of sad, or fucking your way out of sad, or lying your way out of sad, or slanging your way out of sad, or robbing your way out of sad, or gambling your way out of sad, or shooting your way out of sad, are just slower, more acceptable ways for desperate folks, and especially paroled black boys in our country, to kill ourselves and others close to us in America. ~ Kiese Laymon

He was away in a mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern Black boys start to unravel, start to try to unravel, from seven years old to death. The humorless puzzle of inequality and hate. ~ Maya Angelou

We have a civil rights photo collection in our house, a big, beautiful coffee table book with images so vivid they cause jaws to drop. When my daughters and their friends pick it up to look at the young Black boys and girls in the middle of a dangerous struggle, I remind them that our eyes are trained to look at the Black faces and their determination as they walk to school. But I tell them also to look at the white faces in the background: the young, jeering faces shouting slurs and throwing things. "All of those folks are now around your granddad's age," I tell my daughters. They're still with us, and those people now walk around, every day, living with what they did, and either trying to rectify it in their brains, through penance, or voting for Donald Trump and passing that hatred down to their children's children. That is this country. Them. We cannot afford to pretend they don't live among us. ~ Michael Bennett

In London the slaughter of the innocents goes on on a scale more stupendous than any before in the history of the world. And equally stupendous is the callousness of the people who believe in Christ, acknowledge God, and go to church regularly on Sunday. For the rest of the week they riot about on the rents and profits which come to them from the East End stained with the blood of the children. Also, at times, so peculiarly are they made, they will take half a million of these rents and profits and send it away to educate the black boys of the Soudan. ~ Jack London

The train skimmed on softly, slithering, black pennants fluttering, black confetti lost on its own sick-sweet candy wind, down the hill, with the two boys pursuing, the air was so cold they ate ice cream with each breath. ~ Ray Bradbury

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Bob had been caught by the white death, the threat of which hung over every male black in the South. I had heard whispered tales of black boys having sex relations with white prostitutes in the hotels in town, but I had never paid any close attention to them; now those tales came home to me in the form of the death of a man I knew. I did not search for a job that day; I returned home ~ Richard Wright

Then it occurred to her (Elizabeth Keckley) that if Tad (Lincoln's son) had been a colored boy rather than the son of a president, and a teacher had found him so difficult to instruct, he would have been ridiculed as a dunce and held up as evidence of the inferiority of the entire race. Tad was bright; Elizabeth knew that well, and she was sure that with proper instruction and hard work, a glimmer of his father's genius would show in him too. But Elizabeth knew many black boys Tad's age who could read and write beautifully, and yet the myth of inferiority persisted. The unfairness of the assumptions stung. If a white child appeared dull, the entire race was deemed unintelligent. It seemed to Elizabeth that if one race should not judged by a single example, then neither should any other. ~ Jennifer Chiaverini

In those days I would come out of the house, turn onto Flatbush Avenue, and my face would tighten like a Mexican wrestler's mask, my eyes would dart from corner to corner, my arms loose, limber, and ready. This need to be always on guard was an unmeasured expenditure of energy, the slow siphoning of the essence. It contributed to the fast breakdown of our bodies. So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I;d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as thought they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our heads and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. No one told those little white children, with their tricycles, to be twice as good. I imagined their parents telling them to take twice as much. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

If indeed all lives mattered, we would not need to emphatically proclaim that "Black Lives Matter." Or, as we discover on the BLM website: Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter. There are many more specific instances we would have to nane before we can ethically and comfortably claim that All Lives Matter. ~ Angela Y. Davis

At conferences, black boys were assembled. At schools we were herded into auditoriums. At home, mothers summoned us to dinner tables, and there they delivered the news: Our time was short. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school. ~ Tavis Smiley

On the surface, I was bullied for being effeminate, articulate, overweight, well-read, interested in recreations and matters non-traditional for black boys or even black people--essentially for being myself. To be hounded for merely existing in one's own skin is not unique to blacks, but at least during Jim Crow we could turn to one another. In modern-day terrorism, we turn on one another, with limited options for sanctuary. ~ L. Michael Gipson

You wouldn't want a son?"

"Too dangerous," he said. "Black boys are target practice. At least black girls got a chance."

"I don't think that's true." "What's not true? Why you think I enlisted? My pops told me, you better learn to shoot before these white men shoot you, and I did. I been all the way to Iraq and I could walk down the street here and get my head blown off. You don't know what that's like. ~ Brit Bennett

When young Black boys learn that there are no limits to our possibilities on the basketball courts, we create the athletic genius of Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson and in their genius, they recreate the game of basketball. When our young people know that there are no limits to their potential in the world of manufacturing, communication, physics, chemistry or the science of the human mind, then those same young Black minds who create dances on the dance floor or compose music on their bodies with the 'hand jive' will recreate these fields of human endeavor with the same incomparability. ~ Na'im Akbar

On our life map, he drew a bright circle around twelve through eighteen. This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to reemerge on corners and prison tiers. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Familiar words for dead black boys portrayed as complicit in their own demise. Michael Donald's body had been hanged on a Mobile street, and the police were doing the same thing to his name. ~ Ravi Howard

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listen, I traipse no I run no I sprint--a fat, impotent ghoul sprung straight from the cellar of my childhood home--past the pregnant girl with five skeletal children and the nun and the synagogue with its windows stoned through and I'm headed directly for my daughter, Sylvia, at her school where she's stationed with classmates of wannabe punks and black boys with their heads shaved and every one of them, apes, gushing out their hormones as I sprint to the edge of the Earth where Sylvia studies the canon of our national literature that I'm desperately trying to forget. ~ Leland Pitts-Gonzalez

So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I'd heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Dear Young Black Males… Our Future Black Kings: I'm 100% rooting for you, I wholeheartedly believe in you, I deeply care about you, I genuinely love you, and I honestly want to see you succeed in EVERY area of your life. ~ Stephanie Lahart

I went to New Zealand this year, and, whew man, I know a lot of people want to go there. But let me just tell you, it's 22 hours by plane. So, if you have the opportunity, don't. ~ Lewis Black

Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows. ~ Annie Dillard

Americans are inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white. ~ Richard Kerry

When I was growing up, Forest Park was full of integrated families. It was amazing. One my best friends was Vietnamese. Another one was half-Mexican, half-black. Another one was from Colombia. Another one was born in the U.S., but his mom was from Germany and spoke with a German accent. So we all had multiple identities. ~ Dinaw Mengestu

Then there was Nico di Angelo. Dang, that kid gave Leo the freaky-deakies. He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair struck up in curls like baby bat wings. His eyes were sad and kind of empty, as if he'd stared into the depths of Tartarus - which he had. ~ Rick Riordan

She not black, she mulatto. Mulatto, mulatto, mulatto. Maybe she be family to both and to hurt white man just as bad as hurting black man ... ..Maybe if she start to think that she not black or white, then she won't have to care about neither man's affairs. Maybe if she don't care what other people think she be and start think about what she think she be, maybe she can rise over backra and nigger business, since neither ever mean her any good. Since the blood that run through her both black and white, maybe she be her own thing. But what thing she be? ~ Marlon James

Nick glowered at Ash. "Are we through now, Dad? Can I go play with my friends if I promise to be a good boy? I'll even try and make it home by curfew."
Ash laughed evilly. "Oh, absolutely, son. In fact, here come your new playmates now. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life. ~ Gil Scott-Heron

Just the sight of him sent pleasure shooting through me. I might be reluctant to get emotionally involved with anyone right now, but I was still a wolf, and still capable of admiring a good-looking man. Kade was that, and a whole lot more. He was a horseshifter, and his coloring was that of a bay
a rich, mahogany bay that came complete with jet black hair and wicked, velvet-brown eyes. And he was built like a thoroughbred, with broad shoulders, slim hips, and those wonderfully long legs. Legs that could hold a girl just in the right place as she drove him deeper and harder inside.
excert from Darkest Kiss ~ Keri Arthur

Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible. ~ Pearl Bailey

You boys ain't got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you's bad off. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The music we are singing has been sung by hundreds of years by boys. I wonder if God expects to hear it rising off the Earth, like the bloom of a perennial flower. Or if it is a standing challenge, for us to come together and sing for him. Eric tells us in the old days of the castrati, elite Italian choristers who gelded themselves to keep their high clear voices. Some boys hold their crotches when that story is told, but I understand. I could want it that badly, to keep a voice. ~ Alexander Chee

I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. ~ Virginia Woolf

There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.' ~ Holly Black

Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. Even though Muggle physics explicitly permitted possibilities like molecular nanotechnology or the Penrose process for extracting energy from black holes, most people filed that away in the same section of their brain that stored fairy tales and history books, well away from their personal realities: Long ago and far away, ever so long ago. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

If you want a show to succeed, you're going to have to have a certain amount of people watch who are non-black and non-Latino. If you can't cross over, you don't belong on TV. That's not just me saying it. That's just the way it is. ~ George Lopez

He was a beautiful pagan god with the voice of a serial killer, but that didn't make him any less god like. It just meant rather than dying in some dank basement or isolated cabin, I'd die bound on an altar as part of some gruesome sacrificial rite. Exsanguinating while he stood over my naked body with my blood dripping from an obsidian blade...Angelina Martin ~ Candace Vianna

My name is Tomlyn. I am very beautiful. Marshall says I am spiteful and wicked and a barbarian to boot. He's jealous of my thick grey fur, my white chin and breast, and the snowy end of my tail. I suppose he can't help being envious, the great rusty-black thing! He's got a big, blunt beak, and stubby wings, and tiny little eyes... He's old and stupid and a coward; with an endless flow of long words that he can't possibly understand. ~ Nicholas Stuart Gray

I dug the idea that I was being perceived as the black sheep of my family, but for me, it was like, I was a rebel, and that to me was most important. ~ Larry Bishop

If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression. ~ Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

I ... allowed my memory to journey back to the days when I was a boy of ten, full of health and optimism, when my wonder at the great game of living had yet to give way to disillusionment at its shabbiness. ~ Ruskin Bond

It was a good thing to be an African. There were terrible things that happened in Africa, things that brought shame and despair when one thought about them, but that was not all there was in Africa. However great the suffering of the people of Africa, however harrowing the cruelty and chaos brought about by soldiers - small boys with guns, really - there was still so much in Africa from which one could take real pride. There was the kindness, for example, and the ability to smile, and the art and the music. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

American mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows. ~ Cornel West

All you need to know about Antarctica is it's three horizontal stripes. On the bottom, there's the stripe for the water, which is anywhere from black to dark gray. And on top of that, there's a stripe for the land, which is usually black or white. Then there's a stripe for the sky, which is some kind of gray or blue. ~ Maria Semple

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it. ~ Laurence J. Peter

Spring irises bloom.
The caged bird no longer sings -
the knee on his throat. ~ Kamand Kojouri

Boys have outdoor plumbing. Girls have indoor plumbing. If we tried to pee standing up, it would just dribble down our legs. ~ Maya Van Wagenen

He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner with a lively look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, lithe, little man, though rather thickset. Earrings in his brown ears, white teeth lighting up his grotesque brown face, intensely black hair clustering about his brown throat, a ragged red shirt open at his brown breast. Loose, seaman-like trousers, decent shoes, a long red cap, a red sash round his waist, and a knife in it. 'Judge ~ Charles Dickens

After we ate we was silent on our blankets looking out across the mighty Great Divide I never seen this country before it were like a fairy story landscape the clear and windy skies was filled with diamonds the jagged black outlines of the ranges were a panorama.
You're going to ride a horse across all that.
I know.
He laughed and he were right I knew nothing of what lay ahead.
See that there he pointed. That is called the Crosscut Saw and that one is Mount Speculation and yonder is Mount Buggery and that other is Mount Despair did you know that?
No Harry.
You will and you'll be sorry. ~ Peter Carey

Oh, I suppose they're not exactly gone, those green boys. It's rather like a sapling turning into a tree. Can't scrape off the bark, and whittle it down until you find that sapling again, now can you? No, of course not. The sapling becomes an oak. Forever changed. The realities of that war will remain inside us through heaven or hell. Best try and face it, Ty. Running from it won't help. You'll never turn back into the innocent sapling you once were." Robert lifted his glass and grinned. "My friend, we've become a pair of gnarled old trees. ~ Kathleen Baldwin