Black Quotes
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Being black, Latino, or Asian is not a genre. Romantic comedies, thrillers, action - those are genres. I think there's a lot of people who want to have the conversation. I don't think people are afraid of it, I just think it's the time to have that conversation. Race is not a genre.
Mara Brock Akil
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As a very young writer - kindergarten through about fifth grade - I most often wrote about black characters. My very early stories were science fiction and fantasy, with kids stowing away on spaceships and a girl named Tilly who was trying to get into the 'Guinness Book of World Records.'
Tananarive Due
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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.
J. August Richards
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I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.
Tananarive Due
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Everything was black in the harbor, but there were still some fires burning on the ships.
Barney Ross
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I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.
Tavis Smiley
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There's a long tradition of black folks pleading with white people. It's a tradition that emerges from political necessity, so I get it; I'm just not very interested in it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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No library of American business achievement is complete without the story of Arthur G. Gaston. . . . Black Titan is a long overdue contribution to the recording of not just black history, but American history.
Earl G. Graves, Sr.
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When you look at me, you can't really tell what I am, but I'm black, white, Native, Spanish, and a little bit of Filipino.
Kehlani
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The troops aren't red and blue. They're not black and white. They're not male and female. They are Americans! When they put their uniforms on, they are Americans. And that's a fact.
Tamron Hall
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'Black Mirror' obviously has its own universe, with a very strong fingerprint and strong themes, and I was intrigued on reading. It's such a powerful piece of storytelling.
Max Richter
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Questlove is an artist who I respect because he constantly shifts within the idiom, challenging perceptions of hip-hop and black American culture.
Kehinde Wiley
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I'm not interested in making all-black films - I come from a very diverse culture; I want to work with every type of person. I work a lot with women executives because they seem to be a lot more open minded about that and a lot more progressive in that way.
Idris Elba
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Black unemployment is twice white unemployment and has been for decade after decade.
Rand Paul
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Virtually everything I learned about leadership traits and core values, I learned in the Marine Corps. To this day, I keep a list of the traits in a little black book, 14 of them, including integrity, justice, bearing, enthusiasm, endurance - all indicators you aspire to when you're a leader.
Raymond Kelly
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Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve.
Opal Tometi
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Demetrie came to wait on my grandmother in 1955 and stayed for 32 years. It was common, in Mississippi, to have a black domestic cleaning the kitchen, cooking the meals, looking after the white children.
Kathryn Stockett
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I gather that a lot of the "pots" in the great museum in Baghdad, which we allowed to be looted and then gutted, are now for sale to the highest bidder on the art and archeology black market. This is good capitalism, I guess, while a museum, being a public trust and accessible to all, is anticapitalist, pretty damn near socialist in fact.
Ursula K. Le Guin
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This being Black History Month, I would like to ask people to celebrate the similarities and not focus on the differences between people of color and not of color.
Lynn Swann
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From my youngest brother to immigrant women to black queer folks, those are the people who keep me going. When I think about their various acts of courage, it reminds me that I am not alone and that we can do even more, and we deserve more, so we have to keep going.
Opal Tometi
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I'm here because I stand on many, many shoulders, and that's true of every black person I know who has achieved.
Vernon Jordan
