African American Quotes - Page 15

Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough."

Without external pressure, things might have gone very differently. That has always been true for African Americans; the better we've been at raising international awareness, the better off we've been at realizing solutions to our own problems.

If somebody comes up and they're African American as Mike is, and they're extremely talented as Mike is, they say, "Oh, yeah, he's the next ..." I think that it points to disparity.

The fact that there aren't an abundance of African-American males that are getting lead roles [and] that are getting roles that have prominence on the big screen. [It's] the same thing from behind the camera; maybe even worse. Coming up, when you're black and you want to direct somebody says, "Oh, you're Spike Lee" or "You're John Singleton."

I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural literature - it was all things I was trying to do unsuccessfully in my poetry. It really just changed everything. I was introduced to authors like Sandra Cisneros, Gabriel García Márquez, Junot Díaz, and a lot of African American literature, as well.

From being a little girl in the projects, going through all of the mess that I was going through, to ending up at the Inauguration for the first African-American president, I'm speechless right now because I never thought I'd - I never ever - I couldn't even see that far. Even when I ended up in the music business I couldn't see that.

There's no question that there's been a breach in the trust between urban - especially urban community, African-American and minority communities and the police in major American cities.

Justice is not cheap. Justice is not quick. It is not ever finally achieved.

If [Hillary] Clinton can't boost African-American turnout, even with all that help, the question becomes whether she can make up for it with historic levels of support from Hispanics and suburban women.

African-American voters are not nearly as enthusiastic about [Hillary] Clinton as they were about [Barack] Obama.

In 2012, African-Americans were 13 percent of the electorate, and 93 percent of them voted for [Barack] Obama.

The [Hillary] Clinton campaign's recent travel schedule shows how seriously it takes this problem. She and her surrogates have held rallies in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland, trying to boost turnout among African-Americans.

After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected.

We're all African-American, so we're all influenced by each other.

When you graduate is when you start to find yourself looking at the information in the audition breakdown and it says tall black African - or African-American built such and such. And you start seeing these character descriptions and seeing that, oh, you're only going in for the ones that are described as your look.

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.

The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.

Are things getting better with each generation? Yes. It's quite interesting to be living in these times, for me to witness an African-American being elected president. It's quite extraordinary.

My mother always told me to embrace both sides of my background. And she also taught me one very useful thing when I was going to first grade. She said, "You're Bahamian and African-American on one side, and Russian-Jewish on the other. You're no more one than the other, and it's beautiful that you have all this. It makes your life all the more rich. But society will see you only as black."

When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.

When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.

You can expect to see a robust discussion and representation of those issues throughout the convention program. Not just from the nominee, but through other vehicles as well. Expect to see the African-American community, the Latino community, the LGBT community, and others represented on stage and in the substance of our policies throughout the week.

I have a lot of African-American friends.

The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry.

Michigan is very racially separated and the city of Detroit itself is 84 percent African-American and the surrounding suburbs are 86 percent White.