Quotes & Sayings About The Black Community

Sara Blair's Harlem Crossroads is an important addition to the body of literature that currently exists about Harlem. It brilliantly illuminates the complex relationship between photographic representation and race, and adds new insight into the ways in which this one black community has figured in both the critical and public imaginations. Harlem Crossroads is a tour de force. — Dawoud Bey

The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges. — Ed Smith

Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them. — Henry Hampton

The reason why rappers are living in - you know, driving in Mercedes-Benz's and living in neighborhoods is because they're selling their music, not just to the black community, but to the white community. — Eric Bolling

We look at the African-American community, for a long time those of us who be considered strong - black men - for whatever reason, haven't done a good job of taking care of the weak. And we were doing things that render taking care of our youth and taking care of our women and our families impossible, when our lives are taken. — Ryan Coogler

The black community sees itself as one group, and they are all experiencing the same experiences as a group with racism and whatnot, growing up in this country. — Andrea Navedo

The black church is dormant, much of the community is dormant. If the black church is leaning toward the right, much of the community is leaning toward the right. If it is leaning in the left wing direction having repercussions. — Cornel West

My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white. — Peter Abrahams

One of the prices that we pay for integration was the disintegration of the black community. — Ed Smith

But today when people talk about the history of Hopkins's relationship with the black community, the story many of them hold up as the worst offense is that of Henrietta Lacks - a black woman whose body, they say, was exploited by white scientists. — Rebecca Skloot

The empowerment of black women constitutes the empowerment of our entire community. — Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

And I've always been very close to my friends and allies in the black community, the Latino community and organized labor. — Tom Hayden

Progressive policies are harming the Black community. — Deneen Borelli

Testimony is an integral part of the Black religious tradition. It is the occasion where the believer stands before the community of faith in order to give account of the hope that is in him or her. — James Hal Cone

Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular. — Alveda King

Governmental intervention and personal responsibility are not mutually exclusive issues, but they do frame a 'do it ourselves' vs. 'what are you doing for us' debate. For the black community, that's a debate that's been raging at least as far back as the W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington philosophical grudge matches. — John Ridley

Within the black community, roughly 60 percent of children are born to single moms. Moms don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with their children. Their English is atrocious. Their speaking is atrocious. The dropout rate is horrendous. — Walter Dean Myers

I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiarity and via that joining, come to understand that when black people come together to celebrate and rejoice in black critical thinking, we do so not to exclude or to separate, but to participate more fully in world community. However, we must first be able to dialogue with one another, to give one another subject-to-subject recognition that is an act of resistance that is part of the decolonizing, anti-racist process. — Bell Hooks

I know about homophobia in the music industry - not just in hip-hop. Obviously, we're dealing with homophobia in hip-hop; we're dealing with homophobia in the black community. — Jussie Smollett

Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children. — Patricia Hill Collins

Our society is driven today by so much ethnic discord. We have Black Lives Matter, which I praise and celebrate. We have the demagogues stereotyping Muslims and resurrecting racist stereotypes they used to visit on us. The larger goal is to show that we are all the same, we all come from Africa, and we all have the same larger family tree. It's about the fundamental unity of the human community. — Henry Louis Gates

It's both a tremendous obligation and honor to undertake the unfulfilled work of the best of our abolitionist precursors--those who did not only want the abolition of white supremacist slavery and normalized anti-Black violence, but who also recognized that the greatest promise of abolitionism was a comprehensive transformation of a civilization in which the sanctity of white civil society was defined by its capacity to define 'community' and 'safety' through the effective of its ability to wage racial genocides. The present day work of (..) abolition has to proceed with organic recognition of its historical roots in liberation struggles against slavery, colonization, and conquest--and therefore struggle to constantly develop effective, creative, and politically educating forms of radical movement against the genocidal white supremacist state and the society to which it's tethered. — Dylan Rodriguez

I think that the response to the OJ Simpson trial was based on a kind of sensibility that emerged out of the many campaigns to defend black communities against police violence. — Angela Davis

The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery. — Randall Robinson

In no instance were these reports true or were any of these cities actually in flames. But the result was immediate action on the part of white officials. They got in contact with important community and industrial leaders. Riot control measures were ordered into effect. Civilians armed themselves for the coming attack and stationed themselves at strategic points. In most cases many whites became aware of the "danger" and no local black person had any idea what was going on, — John Howard Griffin

I think that we need more economic-based solutions to the problems afflicting the Black community, and I think that that's a way to redefine affirmative action. I grew up with poor white people in West Virginia, and I know there's a culture of poverty. I know that I've seen white people perform exactly the same pathological forms of behavior as Black people do when they're systematically deprived, whether it's getting pregnant, doing drugs, dropping out of school, whatever we're talking about. I think that we should have affirmative action for poor white people too. — Henry Louis Gates

In the black sororities, they celebrate achievement academically, and they really do work toward community service. As much as the white sororities claim that's the case in their groups, it's not really so. White sororities focus on relationships. — Alexandra Robbins

A historian once speculated on what would happen if a time-traveller from 1945 arrived back in Europe just before the First World War, and told an intelligent and well-informed contemporary that within thirty years a European nation would make a systematic attempt to kill all the Jews of Europe and exterminate nearly six million in the process. If the time-traveller invited the contemporary to guess which nation it would be, the chances were that he would have pointed to France, where the Dreyfus affair had recently led to a massive outbreak of virulent popular antisemitism. Or might it be Russia, where the Tsarist 'Black Hundreds' had been massacring large numbers of Jews in the wake if the failed Revolution of 1905. That Germany, with its highly acculturated Jewish community and its comparitive lack of overt or violent political antisemitism, would be the nation to launch this exterminatory campaign would hardly have occurred to him. — Richard J. Evans

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. — Barack Obama

It could only be the employment of carriage whips, tongs, iron pokers, handsaws, stones, paperweights, or whatever might be handy to break the black body, the black family, the black community, the black nation. The bodies were pulverized into stock and marked with insurance. And — Ta-Nehisi Coates

If, with the nation watching, three black women at three different levels can't get justice ... for this community, you tell me where you're going to get it in our country. — Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community, — Coretta Scott King

The little platoon of the black community is the church. Our Christian faith is based on individual freedom from sin and the personal decision to find spiritual liberty that leads to a better life here on Earth and for eternity. On Sundays in America, the most conservative people can be found in black churches. — Allen West

The system of creating opportunities for those who were by law excluded, you've got to do that. But you mustn't create a perception that the process is devoid of competitiveness ... devoid of building a world class, sustainable black business community. — Patrice Motsepe

The Republican Party just isn't held in high repute in the black community. Under Bill Brock we were reaching out to broaden the base of the party. We have to go back to that. — Charles H. Percy

The criminalization and demonization of black men has turned the black community against itself, unraveling community and family relationships, decimating networks of mutual support, and intensifying the shame and self-hate experienced by the current pariah caste. — Michelle Alexander

I was also one of those people who hadn't caught up with the latest social networking site. Maura belonged to most of them. She passed most evenings befriending men who had tried to date-rape her in high school, but I was still stuck in the last virtual community, a sad place to be, like Europe, say, during the Black Death. Whenever I cruised this site, with its favorites lists and its paeans to somebody's cousin's gas station art gallery, I could not help but think of medieval corpses in the spring-thaw mud, buboes sprouted in every armpit and anus, black bile curling out of frozen mouths. Those of us still cursed with life wandered the blasted dales of this stricken network, wept and moaned and flogged ourselves with frayed AC adaptors, called out for God to strike us dead, or else let us find somebody who liked similar bands. — Sam Lipsyte

I am angry about the mammoth, out-of-control social welfare entitlement programs from Washington, D.C., that were supposed to solve our problems. The obvious truth is these impractical, politically motivated programs have irreparably damaged the fabric of our black society and community. — Allen West

We used to say in the black community that if somebody else caught a cold, we caught pneumonia. — Gwen Ifill

This is not a Black problem. It is not a white problem. It is not a police problem. It is a WE problem. We the people, for the people. It is going to take all of us being transparent in order to transform. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

Many theaters are tackling the multifaceted work of black writers - established and emerging. Now the next step is for them to bring in audiences of color and continue to go out to our community and create a continuous connection that extends beyond the one black show in the season. — Katori Hall

In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play. — Danny Glover

With respect to Barack Obama, let's face it; Barack Obama is an iconic figure in the African-American community. We respect that. We understand that. African-Americans are going to vote for the first black president, especially when he happens to share the liberal politics on economic issues that many in that community hold. — Artur Davis

One of the facets of growing up the way I did, I never had the experience of being solely in the black community. Even my family, my mother is what they call Creole, so she's part French, part black, and grew up in Louisiana. It's a very specific kind of blackness that is different than what is traditionally thought of as the black community and black culture. So, I never felt a part of whatever that was. — Justin Simien

When all the public eye sees are headscarves instead of individual stories, our community is collectively tokenized. It creates the perception that opportunity is limited and only a rare few of us can make it. Whenever that happens to an already marginalized community, it pits its own members in a competition against one another instead of against the restrictive frameworks that put us in that position in the first place. The first hijabi whatever won't eliminate Islamophobia just as the first black president hasn't eliminated racism, though both are signifiers of some type of progress - symbols of ascending beyond adversity. — Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

There have been many things that have set my soul on fire throughout my life. Mainly situated within the different phases I go through. In the past, community work did just that, but right now, since I am in a very self-reflective phase, black artists are setting my soul on fire; especially jazz musicians. Like never before, there is a rise of a young cohort who are blowing the jazz scene apart. My soul blazes because black artists are channels that keep us accountable, heal us and reveal different mysteries to us. — Malebo Sephodi

The first eight years of schooling was with all white people. So that helped me to understand how white people think. I think that transition is what helped me bridge the gap, because that's what my success has really been about: bridging the gap between the black community and the white community. — Will Smith

Atheistic evolution isn't an intelligent belief, as atheists would have the black community believe. — Ray Comfort

Two parents can't raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community - everybody - to raise a child. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for white people or for black people. Why are we hanging onto it, I don't know. It isolates people into little units - people need a larger unit. — Toni Morrison

In the case of a man and a woman [accused of commiting a crime together], both will often agree to the man taking the rap despite the man being more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be raped in prison. If blacks were agreeing to do that for whites, the black community would be smart enough to call that 'learned subservience. — Warren Farrell

An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does - must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan. — Stokely Carmichael

The SNCC base of operation, at the corner of Jackson and High Streets, was in the heart of the black community in Montgomery. I don't remember too much else about the city, but I'll always remember that corner. There were hundreds of young people behind police barricades of some sort. Lots of college students, some white, from up North, and some local black folks and college students. The whole Selma-to-Montgomery push, and this ancillary thrust by SNCC in Montgomery, was because on the other side of that barricade there were white folks who had shown they would stop at nothing, including violence, to protect white supremacy. — Junius Williams

Lives Matter" - Those that serve our country matter. Lets be part of the solution to bridge the gap between law enforcement and the community. Change the Atmosphere, Change the Outcome! — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

Broad access to opportunity is the key to a truly equitable America. No matter who you are or where you grew up, Black Faces in White Places provides a blueprint to seizing opportunities at hand - and expanding opportunity for your entire community. — Angela Glover Blackwell

A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family. — Saul Alinsky

Even during my youth, I can recall very few black people living on any kind of public assistance. People were working, doing some kind of job that was useful to the community. — Ed Smith

The acceptance of the facts of African-American history and the African-American historian as a legitimate part of the academic community did not come easily. Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact. — John Henrik Clarke

The establishment wonders why we can't get more of the black vote. It's because it's not doing the things necessary to establish a deeper relationship with the black community. Most black people don't think alike. Most black people just vote alike. — J. C. Watts

I am thankful for the strong, united response of our university community to the desecration of the James Meredith statue last year, confirming our university values of civility and respect. what it is saying is that the only possible justice for a black in the state of Mississippi is the federal government and if there's anything that we don't need it's that being our only means of expecting justice. — James Meredith

I was a lost child. I wasn't accepted in the black community because I was Korean, and I wasn't accepted in the Korean community because I was black — Hines Ward

All my playmates were black. I lived in a little community called Archery (ph) in a rural area. And I didn't have any white neighbors at all. So all my kids with whom I fought and wrestled and went fishing and worked in the field and so forth were African-Americans. And that was my life. So when I got to be school age, we had to separate during the daytime, but I always felt like I was in an alien environment when I was in Plains, Georgia with white kids. I was eager to get back where I belonged with my black playmates. — Jimmy Carter

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. — Malcolm X

All my life I've been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: "Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?" And so I went with them. Period. — Tom Hayden

I don't think President Obama has been that revolutionary in reaching out to ethnic communities. President Reagan did a lot for the black community that people don't realize. — Terrence Howard

I'm albino, my family is white, but I was really raised, and taught my important life lessons, by the black community. — Brother Ali

Not all black women have silently acquiesced in sexism and misogyny within the African-American community. Indeed, many writers, activists, and other women have voiced their opposition and paid the price: they have been ostracized and branded as either man- haters or pawns of white feminists, two of the more predictable modes of disciplining and discrediting black feminists. — Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community built during the sixties. During the early years, it was very integrated. I grew up being taught by black teachers with black principals and vice principals and, you know, a lot of black friends. We played in mixed groups, and I kind of thought that was how it was. — Michael Chabon

I understand what rappers are talking about. I think rap is less about educating people about the black community and more about making money. — Dennis Rodman

It's no surprise I am addicted to all the Republican presidential candidates. They are like crack
in that they will devastate black communities. — Stephen Colbert

In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery. — Marian Wright Edelman

I think there is unnecessary conflict right now between the vehemently religious and the LGBT community. The extremes of religion I think and the LGBT community have an issue and because a lot of black families in America are more religious, I think that is where the conflict comes into play. — John Amaechi

Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense. — Cornel West

Most rappers are black men. If you're a black man, you owe something to the community that you came from. If you're rapping about the community that you came from, and you're romanticizing parts of it for the entertainment of people who don't look like you, you certainly owe something to the community. — Killer Mike

You're not going to have the police force representing the black and brown community, if they've spent the last 30 years busting every son and daughter and father and mother for every piddling drug offense that they've ever done, thus creating a mistrust in the community. But at the same time, you should be able to talk about abuses of power, and you should be able to talk about police brutality and what, in some cases, is as far as I'm concerned, outright murder and outright loss of justice without the police organization targeting you in the way that they have done me. — Quentin Tarantino

So many people representing different sections of our community are taken down one way or another. The system was designed to break us down. The three-strike rule is to break down a black man. — Snoop Dogg

Blackness is a state of mind, and I identify with the black community. Mainly, because I realized, early on, when I walk into a room, people see a black woman, they don't see a white woman. So out of that reason alone, I identify more with the black community. — Halle Berry

While Muggles have been told that Black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other), the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like — J.K. Rowling

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman. — J. C. Watts

If we could buy these properties and then invest in the Black community, with our own McDonald's, with our own Kentucky Fried Chickens, it was gonna be a great move. — Solomon Burke

Who are the slumlords in the Black community? The so-called Jews. ... Who is it sucking our blood in the Black community? A white imposter Arab and a white imposter Jew. — Louis Farrakhan

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large. — Henry Louis Gates

Education remains one of the black community's most enduring values. It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence. — Marian Wright Edelman

For longer than I've been involved in the political process, the Republican establishment has claimed to want to provide an alternative for the black community, yet party elite refuse to show up for the game. — J. C. Watts

The Democratic Party has taken the black community for granted and said, 'This is the most loyal constituency we have. They're not going anywhere.' But the Republican Party has said, 'That's the most loyal constituency Democrats have. They're not going anywhere. We've got to win without them.' — J. C. Watts

We should not have drug laws or a court system that disproportionately punishes the black community. — Rand Paul

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community. — David Sanborn

As blacks, we need not be afraid that encouraging moral development, a conscience and guilt will prevent social action. Black children without the ability to feel a normal amount of guilt will victimize their parents, relatives and community first. They are unlikely to be involved in social action to improve the black community. Their self-centered personalities will cause them to look out for themselves without concern for others, black or white. — James P. Comer

There's some homophobia within black community, but there's some strong homophobia throughout the whole of American society as well, particularly throughout the South to a degree, whether white or black. And since many of us migrated from the South, that could be a strong connection along those lines. — Otis Moss III

Michael Jordan brings millions of dollars when he shows up in an arena. Since money is how we judge people, he's very valuable. But while that's happening, Rome is burning within the black community. — Jim Brown

I'm a black man that is proud to be black, and I want to help the black community, but I love all mankind. — Common

I've gotten nothing but warmth from the Black community and positive feedback. — Misty Copeland

We learned how to envision a different neighborhood, fought for the resources to make it happen, and in March 1968, through the Medical School Agreements, had been given the green light to proceed. All we had to do was make it happen
and ascend to a new level of power in the community. — Junius Williams

Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be. I don't want anyone I know to take that terrible chance. And the only way to avoid it is to listen to that small voice inside you that tells you to make mischief, to have fun, to be contrarian, to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. — Anna Quindlen

Many of the Jews who owned the homes, the apartments in the black community, we considered them bloodsuckers because they took from our community and built their community but didn't offer anything back to our community. — Louis Farrakhan

The community certainly included black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors, and contractors, black cobblers, wedding planners, real estate agents, and undertakers, several black lawyers, and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that's just what black folks did. — Margot Lee Shetterly

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. — Pat Buchanan

In the black community when we think of a couselor or sitting down with a therapist there is that taboo attached to people of being psychotic and crazy. Really it's not it's just sitting down having a conversation. — Gabrielle Dennis

As black people we were out to further our equality. I don't pay attention to the controversial connotations put on by media and the undermining labels they place on us. We pay attention to what our community situation is and what we need. — Chuck D

Is there a war on cops? Is there a war on the Black man? Who is going to call a cease fire? — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

Simply put, white cops are afraid of black men. We don't talk about it, we pretend it doesn't exist, we claim "color blindness," we say white officers treat black men the same way they treat white men. But that's a lie. In fact, the bigger, the darker the black man the greater the fear. The African-American community knows this. Hell, most whites know it. Yet, even though it's a central, if not the defining ingredient in the makeup of police racism, white cops won't admit it to themselves, or to others. — Norm Stamper