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Iron and coal dominated everywhere, from grey to black: the black boots, the black stove-pipe hat, the black coach or carriage, the black iron frame of the hearth, the black cooking pots and pans and stoves. Was it a mourning? Was it protective coloration? Was it mere depression of the senses? No matter what the original color of the paleotechnic milieu might be it was soon reduced by reason of the soot and cinders that accompanied its activities, to its characteristic tones, grey, dirty-brown, black.
Lewis MumfordA lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who's more racist? Black people or white people? Black people. You know why? 'Cuz we hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.
Chris RockIf the white man can come here uneducated and as an immigrant, and within 10 or 15 years set up an industry that provides job opportunities and educational opportunities for black people, then if the black man, the black leadership, who has access to all of this money and has all of these degrees today, can't use his talent and his know-how to set up business opportunities, job opportunities, housing opportunities for the black people the same as the white leaders have done for white people, then these black leaders need to get off the boat.
Malcolm XI was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.
Kathryn StockettOur respect for the dead, when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and black horses; we show it with black dresses and black heraldries; we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which spoil half of our beautiful cathedrals. We show it with frightful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the quiet grass; and last, and not least, we show it by permitting ourselves to tell any number of falsehoods we think amiable or credible in the epitaph.
John RuskinI suggest that Black feminist thought consists of specialised knowledge created by African-American women which clarifies a standpoint of and for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women's reality by those who live it.
Patricia Hill CollinsI'm admitting that I don't know that to be true, but it does sound pretty good. So a big part of my childhood was affecting black culture and black accents and black music and anything black I was into.
Moshe KasherWhen the charge first came up, I hated black women. Then, going to trial, I started seeing the black women that was helping me. It's mostly black female guards. They treat me with human respect.
Tupac ShakurThe Dominican Republic says 'We're black behind the ears.' And in Mexico, 'there's a black grandma in the closet.' They know, they've just been intermarrying for a long time. But if we did the DNA of everyone in Mexico a whole lot of people would have a whole lot of black in them.
Henry Louis GatesRadical militant feminist believes that women of color and Black women in particular have written the cutting edge theory and really were the individuals who exploded feminist theory into the directions that has made it more powerful. So I see us as the leaders not just of Black people and Black women in terms of feminism but in terms of the movement as a whole.
Bell HooksWhen I have my Afro and walk down the street, there's no doubt that I'm black. With this [straightened] hair, if I talk about being black on air, viewers write and say, "You're black?!" I feel [straightening your hair] is giving up a sense of your identity. Let's be honest: It's an effort to look Anglo-Saxon.
Jami FloydIf the churches don't move, much of the community won't move. We've got a situation in which a black church is still a major institution in the black community where 55 percent of the black folk attend and over 75 pass through its doors.
Cornel WestI would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community, I would say that the black newspapers have played it very straight. If I was attacked they simply published that I was attacked, if I was defended they simply said I had been defended. But I don't think they have taken any effort at maligning me or maligning gays or making any effort to give to people anything that wasn't news.
Bayard RustinWhen someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person whoโs asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.
Angela DavisNow it's time to play a brand new game called Name That Barcode. Here's the first one: "Thick black, thin white, thick black, thick white, thick black, thin white." OK who's going to identify that?
Humphrey LytteltonLet's start with the black glove. We felt it necessary being the fact that the Olympic Games, for the first time ever [in 1968], had been televised worldwide. The second thing is the fact that it was in Technicolor. Never had the games been shown in color before.We wanted it to be understood that we were representing America, but we were representing Black America in particular, so that's why we put the black glove on.
John Carlos"Black culture" is ready for whatever. I sense some momentum and excitement around black artists (especially in comedy, which is where most of my own art resides), really pushing the bounds of what has generally been expected as black. I don't think it's a revolution so much as an exposure of what has always been there, and now that the production and distribution means are more accessible, people can more easily find each other.
Baratunde ThurstonBlack ice is the smoothest naturally occuring ice there is, as if nature were condescending to art. ... Black ice is an act of nature as elusive as grace, and far more rare. ... I have never skated on black ice, but perhaps my children will. They'll know it, at least, when it appears: that the earth can stretch smooth and unbroken like grace, and they'll know as they know my voice that they were meant to have their share.
Lorene CaryThe easy answer is to say that it's a part for black people to see black heroes, but to me it's important to young Mexican kids to see a black hero.
Adrian YoungeI've always loved black, and I realized that, from the beginning, man went into completely dark caves to paint. They painted with black too. They could have painted with white because there were white stones all over the ground, but no, they chose to paint with black in the dark.
Pierre SoulagesYou know, I dont play the race card a lot. Im half-black, half-white, and Im proud of - my skin is brown. The world sees me as a black man, but my mother didnt raise me as a black man. She didnt raise me as a white guy.
Shemar MooreIt was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea.
Daniel HandlerThe whites have always had the say in America. White people made Jesus white, angels white, the Last Supper white. If I threaten you, I'm blackmailing you. A black cat is bad luck. If you're put out of a club, you're blackballed. Angel's-food cake is white; devil's-food cake is black. Good guys in cowboy movies wear white hats. The bad guys always wore black hats.
Muhammad AliMy writing is definitely influenced by and speaks to African-Americans because that is who I am. I'm black. I'm a black woman. I'm a black mother, wife, churchgoer, etc. I am the legacy of slavery.
Michelle SingletaryBlack comics, they only watch Black comedians. You're a comedian; you're not just a Black comedian. You're a comedian. I try to get that through to everybody.
Chris RockHere you have 22 million Afro-Americans, black people today, catching more hell than Patrick Henry ever saw. And I'm here to tell you, in case you don't know it, that you got a new - you got a new generation of black people in this country, who don't care anything whatsoever about odds. They don't want to hear you old Uncle Tom handkerchief heads talking about the odds.
Malcolm XAmerican mainstream is obsessed with black creative genius - be it music, walk, style - but at the same time puts a low priority on the black social misery which is the very context out of which that creativity flows.
Cornel WestWhen people nowadays say that Elvis was the first white guy to sound black, I have to shake my head; what can you do? At the time of 'That's My Desire' 1947 they were saying that I was the only white guy around who sounded black.
Frankie LaineThe black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.
Jean-Michel BasquiatWe [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge.
Nikki GiovanniBlack Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we've been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor ... of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people. ... We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan's election.
Thom HartmannGravitational waves will bring us exquisitely accurate maps of black holes - maps of their space-time. Those maps will make it crystal clear whether or not what were dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity.
Kip ThorneMr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top of it, and took a survey of the man of business, who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trousers, and small black gaiters; a kind of being who seemed to be an essential part of the desk at which he was writing, and to have as much thought or sentiment.
Charles DickensIt is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.
Stokely CarmichaelOne movie I think is just terrific is 'Bernie,' with Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. That was a great surprise to me - so witty, so entertaining, a true story, and I'm not a great Jack Black fan, but he's great in it. I think it's a gem.
Robert OsborneThe poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So itโs not being black; itโs a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.
Thomas SowellI write to tell the truth about the black condition as I see it. Therefore, I write to offer a black woman's view of the world.
Sonia SanchezThere are some universal elements when it comes to motherhood - especially for Black moms. Black women are selfless. Many women think of their children before they think about themselves.
Tichina ArnoldThe little black dress must be luxurious, rich, sensual, diaphanous, exotic, severe, lush, demure, demanding, frivolous, amusing, and it must linger in memory, but above all, it must be simple and little and black.
Carolina HerreraWe have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.
Martin Luther King, Jr.The painting was framed in a misty view of sky, sea, and valley. Newt's painting was small, black, and warty. It consisted of scratches made in a black, gummy impasto. The scratches formed a sort of spider's web, and I wondered if they might not be the sticky nets of human futility hung up on a moonless night to dry.
Kurt VonnegutBill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack. He's probably gone with more black women than Barack.
Andrew YoungI use very little red. I use blue, yellow, a little green, but especially... black, white and grey. There is a certain need in me for communication with human beings. Black and white is writing.
Hans ArpI think that any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peacefully after they've been turning the cheek and suffering peacefully for 400 years in a land of bondage, under the most cruel, inhuman and wicked slavemaster that any people have ever been under, he is doing those people an injustice, and he's a traitor to his own people.
Malcolm XFor instance, if you're a black guy and you got pulled over, and you didn't know that any other black men were being pulled over, you would constantly in the back of your head be thinking, "What did I do?" rather than, "I didn't do anything, these are just the conditions I live under."
Claudia RankineThere's all kinds of depictions of black men. You have the Denzel Washingtons and the Will Smiths; that's wonderful, but that doesn't represent everyone. There's a Russell Crowe... well, you know, there's a black Russell Crowe.
Michael Jai WhiteI'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.
August WilsonIn it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.
Cyrano de Bergerac