Ishmael Reed Quotes
I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.
Quotes to Explore
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We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
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Every time a young girl comes in and asks me for advice, if you start your conversation with, 'How hard is it as a black woman,' or, 'How hard is it as a woman,' I turn you around. Because I cannot - we cannot look at the roadblocks and see the road at the same time.
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When in life do you get a black and white printout that says this is what you should do? It just doesn't happen.
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One of my personal plights in this business is about playing 'The Sassy Black Girl.'
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In a completely integrated unit where you'd have white soldiers, particularly from southern states, serving under black noncommissioned officers or officers... I think you would have a problem definitely.
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College was where I got to actually experience the difference between black and white.
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It's an ongoing joke that a black man is always the first one to get killed in movies.
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Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.
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If your response to the first black president is to say they weren't born in this country... you might be a white supremacist.
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But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.
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Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have to sit in the Colored balcony.
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If a little black girl in Montgomery, Alabama, or some far-reaching region sees something that I do and aspires to do it one day with the knowledge that she can achieve it, then hey, my work is done.
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My natural hair is jet black. I used to have it down to my bum. And I went through a phase of being obsessed with fake tan. So from the age of 14 to 16, I looked like an Apache Indian!
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I feel like my life experience is that of an outsider. Let me explain: my parents are from Panama, and they moved to the United States the year after I was born. They moved into an all-white neighborhood, where the previous black family had a cross burned on their lawn.
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Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.
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What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people, 'Do they hate him?' That takes a lot of nerve.
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My black brothers and sisters - of all religious beliefs, or of no religious beliefs - we all have in common the greatest binding tie we could have. We are all black people!
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If it's lawful to have a rifle club to kill pheasants, it should be just as lawful to have one to kill wolves or dogs that are being sicked on little black babies. In fact, it's constitutional. Article Number Two of the constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to own a rifle or a shot gun.
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Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.
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I've always been a spontaneous singer. And all the stuff that you hear on the end of the songs, what they call the ad libs - that just comes out of my head. That's not thought out at all. I have the verses and the choruses, and then after that it's total improvisation.
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I base myself in African-derived music. Blues is one of the modern forms of African music.
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Open-minded people tend to be interested in Buddhism because Buddha urged people to investigate things - he didn't just command them to believe.
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It's amazing how much you can learn if your intentions are truly earnest.
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I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.
