Black Men Quotes

“Daddy once told me there's a rage passed down to every black man from his ancestors, born the moment they couldn't stop the slave masters from hurting their families. Daddy also said there's nothing more dangerous than when that rage is activated.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Once upon a time black male “cool” was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a “poor me” victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others.”
― bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“If you believe in a cause, be willing to stand up for that cause with a million people or by yourself.”
― Otis S. Johnson, From "N Word" to Mr. Mayor: Experiencing the American Dream

“Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it…Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.”
― bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“Emmanuel started learning the basics of his Blackness before he knew how to do long division: smiling when angry, whispering when he wanted to yell.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

“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, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

“Sociologically, politically, psychologically, spiritually, it was never enough for James Baldwin to categorize himself as one thing or the other: not just black, not just sexual, not just American, nor even just as a world-class literary artist. He embraced the whole of life the way the sun’s gravitational passion embraces everything from the smallest wandering comet to the largest looming planet.”
― Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays

“I am a Black woman, therefore, I am destined to protect myself. Our men have wandered too far to beckon. They are lost guardians. Thus, you learn early on how to wield your sword & hoist your shield -- how to stand shoulder to shoulder with your sister in battle and wail a cry that never seems to be loud enough. And I am tired. If only I could rest. To be a Queen with no infantry is a painful sight indeed. They do not yield to my crown. How useless is my throne, if I am to continue to fight alone?”
― Bethanee Epifani J. Bryant, Don't Fall Prey! Dating Tales, Trials, & Triumphs

“I'd had to learn again how to watch a man move through the world and calibrate his every step to be disarming, how to watch a man worry about his body and the conditions under which someone might take his any gesture the wrong way. I'd had to remember back to high school, when my heart belonged only to boys of my color, to whom I had to insist that no one else's disrespect of me was worth a fight, was worth what a fight would cost them.”
― Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections

“have you ever
heard
a black woman weep over her skinmurdered child.
it is the splitting of atoms.
it is billions
of
voices screaming their children’s names
through
her death wail.

–– trayvon martin ii”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“When we do not heal, we allow our worst moments to define and shape us. We lose our ability to see the good in situations and people, enjoy the simple moments, persevere through conflict, and bring our best selves to our relationships.”
― Nijiama Smalls, The Black Family's Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds

“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

“The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.”
― Alice Walker

“My brother had received the same talk, but with one slight variation. My mother, fighting back tears, had told him that when he grew up, the world would perceive him as a big, scary black man. That he must never help anyone stranded or on the side of the road. That he must never leave his car for any reason unless absolutely necessary. That he must be careful about driving or being in public places at night for his entire life.”
― Penny Reid, Dr. Strange Beard

“Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

“did ya ever cry
Black man, did ya ever cry
til you knocked all over?

- Haiku”
― Sonia Sanchez, Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

“Stay wif da real and da real g'on stay wif 'chu!”
― Panther Optikonz

“One of the main uses of most criminal justice systems is to minimize the number of people who are not white, by imprisoning innocent males who are neither white nor gay.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“just

then a little black ant struggles by alone, alone. And
in that moment, I want us to give ourselves over

to industry, carry the weight of the day together, lighten
it. I want to be a part of a colony where I feel easy

walking around. Cool as the goddamn breeze. Where
I can breathe, build structures sturdier and grander

than this—but the woman crosses to the other side
of the street, and I do what I usually do: retreat into

myself as far as I can, then send out whatever’s left.”
― Michael Kleber-Diggs, Worldly Things

“This is why I paint," he says. "To get black men into museums.”
― Jennifer Clement

“The Tuskegee experiments are certainly a good reason for ongoing mistrust, but it is important not to overlook mistrust that is generated from contemporary health care experiences.”
― Clare Xanthos, Social Determinants of Health Among African-American Men

“And she got the feeling that Boots Smith's relationship to this swiftly moving car was no ordinary one. He wasn't just a black man driving a car at a pell-mell pace. He had lost all sense of time and space as the car plunged forward into the cold, white night.

The act of driving the car made him feel he was a powerful being who could conquer the world. Up over hills, fast down on the other side. It was like playing god and commanding everything within hearing to awaken and listen to him. The people sleeping in the white farmhouses were at the mercy of the sound of his engine roaring past in the night. It brought them half-awake—disturbed, uneasy. The cattle in the barns moved in protest, the chickens stirred on their roosts and before any of them could analyze the sound that had alarmed them, he was gone—on and on into the night.

And she knew, too, that this was the reason white people turned scornfully to look at Negroes who swooped past them on the highways. 'Crazy niggers with autos' in the way they looked. Because they sensed that the black men had to roar past them, had for a brief moment to feel equal, feel superior; had to take reckless chances going around curves, passing on hills, so that they would be better able to face a world that took pains to make them feel that they didn't belong, that they were inferior.

Because in that one moment of passing a white man in a car they could feel good and the good feeling would last long enough so that they could hold their heads up the next day and the day after that. And the white people in the cars hated it because—and her mind stumbled over the thought and then went on—because possibly they, too, needed to go on feeling superior. Because if they didn't, it upset the delicate balance of the world they moved in when they could see for themselves that a black man in a ratclap car could overtake and pass them on a hill. Because if there was nothing left for them but that business of feeling superior to black people, and that was taken away even for the split second of one car going ahead of another, it left them with nothing.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“The women work because the white folks give them jobs—washing dishes and clothes and floors and windows. The women work because for years now the white folks haven’t liked to give black men jobs that paid enough for them to support their families. And finally it gets to be too late for some of them. Even wars don’t change it. The men get out of the habit of working and the houses are old and gloomy and the walls press in. And the men go off, move on, slip away, find new women. Find younger women.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“That morning, like every morning, the first decision he made regarded his Blackness. His skin was a deep, constant brown. In public, when people could actually see him, it was impossible to get his Blackness down to anywhere near a 1.5. If he wore a tie, wing-tipped shoes, smiled constantly, used his indoor voice, and kept his hands strapped and calm at his sides, he could get his Blackness as low as 4.0.”
― Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

“She supposed the young colored men of Link's generation couldn't have manners like Mr. Powther's, though she didn't know why. Wars and atom bombs and the fact that there was so much hate in the world might have something to do with it. There were times when she had thought that rudeness was a characteristic of Link's; that other young men had a natural courtesy he would never have. Then she would see or hear something in The Narrows that suggested all these young men were alike--something had brutalized them. But what?”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows

“She's scared, he thought. She's scared deaf, dumb, and blind. She thinks I'm going to rape her. I'm due to rape her, or try to, because I'm colored and it's written in the cards that colored men live for the sole purpose of raping white women, especially young beautiful white women who are on the loose.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows

“The attendant looked at Camilo, looked at Link, blandly, incuriously. Link thought, In New York all the black boys who go in for what they like to call Caddies also go in for white girls. So this is old hat to him. He figures that if I'm rich enough--numbers or women or rackets of one kind or another--to drive one of these crates, then almost any good-looking white girl is going to find me acceptable. Money transforms the black male. Makes him beautiful in the eyes of the white female. Black and comely. No. It was black but comely, take it for granted that blackness and comeliness were not only possible but went hand in hand.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows

“Well, of course," Camilo said, and grinned back at JohnRolandJoseph and his long line of bought and paid for ancestors, as friendly and unselfconscious as though all her life she had been looking for men, black men, big black men--plantation bucks (stud) look at his thighs, look at that back, look at his dingle-dangle--as though all her life she had been looking for colored men to whom she was not married, to whom she would never be married because she was already married to a nice young white man, as though all her life she had told uniformed monkeys who pulled elevators in rundown colored hotels, in Harlem, that she couldn't find, had lost, misplaced, a gentleman of color named Williams.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows

“It's just too easy for a gay black man to drown amid the names of dead black gay men.”
― Saeed Jones, How We Fight For Our Lives

“The literature on African-American men’s health has often been informed by a
“health behavior framework” as opposed to a “social determinants of health
framework.”
― Clare Xanthos, Social Determinants of Health Among African-American Men