That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and as a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, if we’ve progressed as a society, then you don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.
I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American.
When I walk in the door sometimes, I'm already an anomaly. Because I'm working in a genre that African-American's don't typically engage in.
The fact is, yes, statistically, African Americans and Latinos are getting hit harder, but it`s something that we can have real solidarity across racial lines on, to raise the minimum wage, to lower the cost of going to college, to make sure there`s real consumer protection.
There's a thing called the 'One Drop' theory in African-American culture, which is if you have one drop of black blood in you, you're black.
I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.
New Jersey for me is so alive with history. It's old, dynamic, African-American, Latino.
I don't know how many off the record conversations I've had with African-American leaders who would not be quoted and refused to make their sentiments public.
Lots of African-American people really so adore Barack Obama that they're unwilling to even be mildly critical of him.
While the banks got big bailouts, a sizeable chunk of African-American wealth evaporated because so many people lost homes.
African-American people adore President Obama.
I serve on the Institute of the Black World's National Commission on African-American Reparations, and we have asked the President [Barack Obama] to, by executive order, establish a commission to study reparations. He can do this without Congressional approval. While I am not optimistic, I do hope that President Obama considers this in these waning months of his Presidency.
African-Americans have rarely been the beneficiaries of Presidential rhetorical excess.
Jim Jones started out as a civil rights crusader in Indianapolis. As a young preacher in the mid-50s, he used members of his congregation to integrate lunch counters and all-white churches in rich neighborhoods; they'd just march in and sit down at the pews and see what happened. Often they were received with racist insults, and once with a bomb threat. But the fact that you had this charismatic, white man, aggressively promoting racial equality, was a huge draw for African Americans, many of whom felt the Civil Rights Movement had stalled by the late 60s.
In 2008, the Democrats made a great effort among African-American voters, and they did increase their turnout considerably, and among Latino voters.
I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?
Everybody knows this legend in kind of African-American lore. There's always somebody in your neighborhood named Orangejello or Lemonjello. And that's spelled - Orangejello is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E-J-E-L-L-O.
I've always thought of myself as an African-American comedian, African-American man, everything.
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the other category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
I've been very lucky to have a family who has welcomed me and not been hung up on anything racial, almost overlooking the fact that there was a racial difference. But I can honestly say I do feel like I missed out on some lessons of what the African-American experience is like growing up.
When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African American culture that I couldn't imagine not being part of it.
Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.
We all remember that [Donald] Trump was one of the leaders of the so-called birther movement trying to delegitimize the presidency of our first African-American president Barack Obama, which is an outrage.
To be a survivor as an African American man - maybe any man - you have to be pretty tough. Or at least that's what we all understand.
That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.
