Black Americans Quotes

All I held against Jews was that so many Jews actually were hypocrites in their claim to be friends of the American black man.

As black Americans continue to be insulted and dismissed by protected white liberals, the Black Talented Tenth will continue to benefit from political donations, speaking engagements, national media presence, accolades as the official black leaders, and perpetual gigs on MSNBC and CNN.

In fact, the religious right consists of an alliance of several groups that, without experiencing anything like the oppression visited on black Americans, have consistently occupied lower rungs in the American social hierarchy.

Yes, of course, black Americans are a special group, and I'm disappointed that they're not Republicans, given our traditions. We're not getting much love in return, despite our efforts.

Harriet Washington, in 'Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,' documents the smallpox experiments Thomas Jefferson performed on his Monticello slaves. In fact, much of what we now think of as public health emerged from the slave system.

White Americans believe we've made more progress since the end of slavery in 1865 than do black Americans for whom '12 Years a Slave' documents a collective memory, passed down in the genes and by the lore of generations.

As we lose manufacturing jobs across the country, the burden falls disproportionately on Black Americans.

I happen to think that conservatism, when properly applied to the 21st century, could actually help everybody. And the message of Trump's campaign was obviously not super-appealing to Latino Americans, black Americans and so forth. That really bothered me.

Let it be said that when given a chance to complete the liberation of black Americans, on June 23, 2003 five justices consigned them to another generation - or, perhaps, a term of indefinite duration - of virtual enslavement to the past.

The great drama at the core of American race relations is always the same: Can black Americans ever be truly equal - are they capable of achieving it and are others capable of accepting it?

I fully recognize and appreciate the many substantial contributions of black Americans and other minorities to the creation and preservation and development of our great nation.

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

I think it's a bit of a myth that black Americans need one leader. We're not a monolith. And now that legal segregation and discrimination has been pretty much abolished there isn't the sort of universal mandate that a black leader would have. Black folks live in a wide variety of social situations right now.

As America prepared for war in 1941, discrimination largely shut black Americans out of job opportunities in the growing defense industry.

The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country’s shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap.

So white guilt is not a guilt of conscience; it's not something that you get up in the morning and say, my God, I feel guilty about what happened to black Americans. Rather it is the fact that in relation to black Americans you lack moral authority.

When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.

To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans.

For black people the war [WWII] provided an opportunity to accelerate their demands for equality…. Black Americans highlighted the distance between this ideal of America and the reality of ongoing racial inequality, often through the black press and civil rights organizations

Black Americans have organized all across this country because we have an unequal justice system, not because anyone demands special privileges.

I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism.

It is time to celebrate the New Black Americans - those who have sealed the Deal, who aren't beholden to liberal indulgence any more than they are to the disdain of the hard Right. It is time to praise blacks who are merely undeniable in their individuality and exemplary in their levels of achievement.