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Quotes About Black men

It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If Black men continue to define "femininity" instead of their own desires, and to do it in archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other's energies
~ Audre Lorde
Bottom line: Black men like curves. When they're crooning to women about how beautiful they are in an R&B song, the ladies you see in the video don't reflect what those guys like.
~ Sir Mix-a-Lot
You were more concerned that slavery should be a moral stain upon white men than by the actual damage it wreaks on black men." Even as I spoke these words, I could hear what a false picture they painted, and also how they were painfully true.
~ Esi Edugyan
Government social programs introduced in the '60s by liberal Democratic politicians seduced black men into relying on 'programs' over God.
~ Jesse Lee Peterson
While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop.
~ bell hooks
Patriarchal hip-hop ushered in a world where black males could declare that they were "keeping it real" when what they were really doing was taking the dead patriarchal protest of the black power movement and rearticulating it in forms that, though entertaining, had for the most part no transformative power, no ability to intervene on the politics of domination, and turn the real lives of black men around.
~ bell hooks
For black men of all ages it is more acceptable to express rage than to give voice to emotional needs.
~ bell hooks
Those men who accepted the myth that black women were matriarchs did regard black females as a threat to their personal power. Such thinking is not at all peculiar to black men. Most men in a patriarchal society fear and resent women who do not assume traditional passive roles. By shifting the responsibility for the unemployment of black men onto black women and away from themselves, white racist oppressors were able to establish a bond of solidarity with black men based on mutual sexism.
~ bell hooks
Having reached a point where I was successfully completing a number of desired goals, I was experiencing both a "void" and undergoing the kind of critical self-examination that brought about a crisis in meaning. It was a time for me to re-vision my life and chart new and different journeys. I think it's very hard for successful black women (and black men) to turn away from achievements, high-status positions with visibility, that may no longer be meeting our growth needs.
~ bell hooks
Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery!
~ Sister Souljah
Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say "This time you did it to yourself." I won't play that game.
~ Sister Souljah
There's a lot of black men running around with crazy trauma scars, and they should be going to therapy. They should be sitting down and talking to people. But they can't. If you've got the armor of being a man, and the armor of being a black man, that hyper-masculine thing can make those scars deeper.
~ Daniel Kaluuya
This is not about you. Nobody gives a shit whether you like pot or hate it. This is a race issue. It's a civil rights issue. It's about millions of people losing their liberty and their lives because of ridiculous drug laws that do not work. There are generations of black men in prison because they were caught with a substance that's less harmful than alcohol. You're a white guy, so you don't have to worry about it. Others do.
~ Bruce Barcott
We look at the African-American community, for a long time those of us who be considered strong - black men - for whatever reason, haven't done a good job of taking care of the weak. And we were doing things that render taking care of our youth and taking care of our women and our families impossible, when our lives are taken.
~ Ryan Coogler
One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.
~ Robert Bly
only hope through this work to provoke the kind of sustained analysis, discourse, attitudes, and behaviors that will move all Black women and men closer to enjoying the fullness and uniqueness of their humanity.
~ Kelly Brown Douglas
Black men who have succeeded have an obligation to serve as role models for young men entrapped by a vicious cycle of poverty, despair, and hopelessness.
~ Benjamin Hooks
The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.
~ Larry Elder
When Malcolm X, who is considered the movement's second-in-command, and heir apparent, points out that the cry of "violence" was not raised, for example, when the Israelis fought to regain Israel, and, indeed, is raised only when black men indicate that they will fight for their rights, he is speaking the truth. The
~ James Baldwin
Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.
~ Aberjhani
Suddenly the sun was up. It sparkled like a dewy foam across the field of weeds. Master Sun! Honor and respect, Master Sun! We black men greet you with a swirl of hoes snatching bright sparks of fire from the sky.
~ Langston Hughes
But no one could say he hadn't gotten even. He could not count the field women whom he had sexually degraded and demoralized and in whom he had left his seed so their bastard children would be a daily visual reminder of what a plantation white man could do to a plantation black woman whenever he wanted, nor could he count the black men whom he had made fear his blackjack as they would fear Satan himself, making each of them a lifetime enemy of all white people.
~ James Lee Burke
What rent do you pay here? I inquired. I don't know,—what is it, Sam? All we make, answered Sam. It is a depressing place,—bare, unshaded, with no charm of past association, only a memory of forced human toil,—now, then, and before the war. They are not happy, these black men whom we meet throughout this region. There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro.
~ W.E.B. Du Bois
VIII. TRANSUBSTANTIATION OF A POOR WHITE How Andrew Johnson, unexpectedly raised to the Presidency, was suddenly set between a democracy which included poor whites and black men, and an autocracy that included Big Business and slave barons; and how torn between impossible allegiances, he ended in forcing a hesitant nation to choose between the increased political power of a restored Southern oligarchy and votes for Negroes.
~ W.E.B. Du Bois