Quotes About African-American

I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of a manifestation of the American dream: 'If it can happen for him, it can happen for me.'

My father was born in the year 1900 in South Carolina, and he grew up at a time where being an African-American child in the American South was to be deprived of access to anything close to a reasonable education. He only had three years of formal education, but he was self-taught. He read two newspapers a day.

I think that seeing as much support as somebody like Obama as a black candidate running for president in a country that historically has had issues with the African-American people, and them having issues vice-versa, is a miraculous thing.

In the community, in the African-American community, one person ought to say something, and that is the minister. The minister is paid by the people. He doesn't work for a big company. He doesn't represent a particular special interest.

Her continuity - you know, if you connect Harriet Tubman, who died in 1913, to Rosa Parks, born in 1913, you get this extraordinary spectrum of the African-American experience.

Black musicians were imitating speech cadences, and Kerouac was imitating the black musicians' breath cadences on their horns and brought it back to speech. It always was speech rhythms or cadences as far as the ear that Kerouac was developing. All passed through black music.

When you ask people who their favorite comedian is or favorite African-American comedian, people generally say Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Eddie Murphy, or Richard Pryor. Redd Foxx gets left out a lot.

'Boomerang!' I love that movie just because of Halle Berry, Robin Givens, Eddie Murphy, Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt. There were so many characters. As an actress, to see African-American actors be so diverse was different from what I was used to seeing.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,I heard a Negro play.Down on Lenox Avenue the other nightBy the pale dull pallor of an old gas lightHe did a lazy sway…He did a lazy sway…To the tune o' those Weary Blues.

Yes, I was inspired by Jack London and still love reading his books. Ernie Banks is another hero because I lived in Chicago for two years as a kid, and I loved that he was the Cubs' loyal underdog and one of the first African-Americans to make that breakthrough.

I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.

Unfortunately, in television today there are very few African-American characters who are human beings. They are typically two-dimensional stereotypes, cookie-cutter types.

What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.

What makes 'Pootie Tang' the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it's a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner.

'Greenleaf' is nothing like 'Empire.' I think 'Empire' stands alone in what they are doing. It's a wonderful show. The only thing that is similar though is that they are black families - the shows in it of themselves have very different dynamics.

I just want to make sure that I'm taking roles that are positive, real, honest reflections of African-Americans because I do think the media can put African-American women in the background. Then, unfortunately, what happens is, subconsciously, our culture begins to assess that as reality.

I think that people in America, unfortunately or fortunately, are just discovering different aspects of the humanity of African-American people. And so I think with that discovery comes, 'Oh, you could be a superhero; you could be president or whatever it is that we thought you couldn't be.'

I think others may look at the uniqueness of my candidacy, the fact that I'm an African-American, conservative tea party Republican, and somehow race injects itself into the conversation.

The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.

People have assumed that I have to run the ball before I can throw it most all of my career, all the way back before high school. It's a stereotype put on me for a long time because I'm African-American, and I'm a dual-threat quarterback.

As an African-American athlete, you get discouraged that this type of thing is still condoned in people's lives. You look at a situation where we're good enough to work for you, but not good enough to be around you. To build a franchise, good enough to build business for you, but not good enough to mingle amongst your circles.

My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

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.

I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.