Black In America Quotes

“Most people write me off when they see me.
They do not know my story.
They say I am just an African.
They judge me before they get to know me.
What they do not know is
The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins;
The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people;
The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community;
The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance;
The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it.
Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning.
So you think I am nothing?
Don’t worry about what I am now,
For what I will be, I am gradually becoming.
I will raise my head high wherever I go
Because of my African pride,
And nobody will take that away from me.”
― idowu koyenikan, Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams

“You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You are not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“A little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn't name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. Beulah ran in her sleep, ran like she'd stolen something, when really she had done nothing other than expect the peace, the clarity, that came with dreaming. Yes, Jo thought, this was where it started, but when, where, did it end?”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“But Jo wasn't angry. Not anymore. He couldn't really tell if what he had been before was angry. It was an emotion he had no use for, that accomplished nothing and meant even less than that. If anything, what Jo really felt was tired.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“The older Jo got, the more he understood about the woman called Ma. The more he understood that sometimes staying free required unimaginable sacrifice.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I am living in the most opportune time in black history in the United States and that means, still, that I will die younger, live poorer, risk more exposure to police violence, and be punished by social policy for being a black woman in ways that aren’t true for almost any other group in this nation. That is the best it has ever been to be black in America and it is still that statistically bad at the macro level.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“... as a reminder that a white man could still kill him for nothing.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“when an assault rifle is aimed at your face over nothing more than a refusal to move, you don't feel like the American experience is one that includes you”
― Kareem Jackson

“Maya Angelou had the ability to glean inspiration out of pain.”
― The Prophet of Life

“…it has been very dangerous time to be a black male in America. There have been several high profile cases that have been covered in the national press as well as stories which have not. Many of these involve white police officers killing unarmed black men.”
― The Prophet of Life

“Consider the statistics that African American Males are stopped by the police more often, convicted for crimes more often and draw prison more often and draw longer prison sentences more often than their white counterparts.”
― The Prophet of Life

“Prejudice is not a symptom of stupidity. Nor is it a symptom of evil. It is merely a symptom of ignorance.”
― The Prophet of Life, Black In America: Essays & Poems about Racism in America. Includes: Why We Say Black Lives Matter, The Murders of Breonna Taylor & George Floyd

“They'd heard it all, but hadn't they earned their freedom? The days of running through forests and living under floorboards. Wasn't that the price they had paid?”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“When I was twelve years old, I looked in the mirror and I saw what I perceived to be my faults and my mother's faults. These coalesced into a dark mark that I would carry through my life, a coating of what I saw, which came from others' hatred of me, and all this forested a hatred of myself. I thought being unwanted and abandoned and persecuted was the legacy of the poor southern Black woman. But as an adult, I see my mother's legacy anew. I see how all the burdens she bore, the burdens of her history and identity and of our country's history and identity , enable her to manifest her greatest gifts. My mother had the courage to look at four hungry children and find a way to fill them. My mother had the strength to work her body to its breaking point to provide for herself and her children. My mother had the residence to cobble together a family from the broken bits of another. And my mother's example teaches me other things: This how a transplanted people survived a holocaust and slavery. This is how Black people in the South organized to vote under the shadow of terrorism and the noose. This is how human begins sleep and wake and fight and survive. In the end, this is a how a mother teaches her daughter to have courage, to have strength, to be resilient, to open her eyes to what it is, and to make something of it.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped: A Memoir

“He knows something I don't. Perhaps he's looked into his own mirror and seen my father when I had only seen my father's absence. Perhaps my father taught my brother what it meant to be a Black man in the South too well: unsteady work, one dead-end job after another, institutions that systematically undervalue him as worker, a citizen, a human being.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped: A Memoir

“As I waited, my mind filled in the blanks, envisioned the future, wrote a nightmare of a story. Every black mother, sister, and wife in America has written some version of that story in her mind. In that story, our promises to take care of our sons, brothers, and husbands turn into lies. This a daily heartbreak. For too many, that story has become real, That story is an American terror.”
― Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks

“Black people are expected by the white world to be strong but not angry. Pain must be hidden. Daily slights are to be borne with grace, humility, even gratitude. Weakness is intolerable. Vulnerability must wait until the day is done and the mask can come off in the privacy of our won homes. And by then we are too tired or too stiff to feel it. This is not just true for black people living in Europe or America. It is also true, in a different form in Africa and the Caribbean, where black people are the majority. People in former European colonies must see their lives in relation to the lives of white people. As communities, as individuals, we have been told we are inferior. Our economies, our livelihoods, are reliant on Western economies, white people's livelihoods.”
― Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks

“The point of racism is to dehumanize those targeted by the racism. Violence as a reaction to injustice provides ammunition to racists.”
― The Prophet of Life, Black In America: Essays & Poems about Racism in America. Includes: Why We Say Black Lives Matter, The Murders of Breonna Taylor & George Floyd

“I thought [...] of all the negotiating and navigating it requires to exist while black and relatively sane. And how, for the rest of them, for my [white] teammates and the [white] guys we just played against and the [white] guys waiting to play next game, this was just another game. Just another week. Just another day. Just another election. Just another president. Just another Thursday. Whiteness in America exists and thrives in that _just another_ space, where things will always be fine. Things will always be all right. Things will always work out. (p. 288)”
― Damon Young, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays

“I'm just as aware of the injustices done to the black man as anyone," the Dipper would explain years after. "I just don't believe that you help things by running around, saying how evil Whitey is. I figure I done my share - the restaurants I integrated in Kansas, the busloads of black kids I used to take to summer camp from Harlem, the contributions I make, in my name and money, to various black causes and programs. Just because I don't call a press conference every time I do something like that doesn't mean I am insensitive to the black man's plight.”
― Gary M. Pomerantz, Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era