Quotes about blackness
page 21

“I've got my little black dress on
And if I tell myself that nothing's wrong
This doesn't have to be a sad song
Not with my little black dress on.”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Little Black Dress"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Sadness

“It's all about the atmosphere of nature, for sure, but I want the painting to arouse clarity, cheerfulness. When it is finished, then I have to live with it, that's why it must become a pleasant thing. Sun. Clarity. Never white-black, because there are so many shades in between! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Gerrit Benner (1897–1981) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Gerrit Benner, in het Nederlands:) Het gaat om de sfeer van de natuur, zeker, maar ik wil dat het schilderij klaarte, vrolijkheid opwekt. Als zo'n ding af is, dan moet ik ermee leven, daarom moet het prettig zijn. Zon. Klaarte. Nooit wit-zwart, want daar zijn zoveel tinten tussen! quoted by Hans Redeker (before 1967), in Gerrit Benner; Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1967; as cited by Susan van den Berg in 'Benner en Bregman', website 'de Moanne' http://www.demoanne.nl/benner-en-bregman/, 1 Sept. 2008, note xx 1950 - 1980

Nature, Sun, Painting

“Excessive toil occurred only where the masters or overseers were feeble witted as well as brutal. A persistent rumor among abolitionists was that sugar planters followed a policy of working slaves to death in seven years as a matter of economy. The persons spreading such reports were as ignorant of Negro nature as they were of conditions in the sugar mills. Furthermore, they overrated the ability of the masters to know how to kill a slave in the given time instead of leaving him a broken-down burden to the plantation. When they set out to prove the accusation they returned with no evidence, but convinced that the practice existed in some obscure region which they had not succeeded in ferreting out. Harriet Martineau, after watching slaves go through the motions of work without tiring themselves, considered the planters as models of patience and observed that new slave owners from Europe or the North were prone to be the most severe. Numerous observers, of various shades of opinion on slavery, agreed that brutality was no more common in the black belt than among free labor elsewhere, and that the slave owners were the worst victims of the system.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Death, Nature, Time, Personality

“Somehow, white South Africans believed that black labor was like a lawn mower: you could have it around, and when you didn’t need it, you could hide it in its little shed where it would be good and quiet-until you needed it again.”

Arthur Kemp (1962) British writer

The Lie of Apartheid

“Andrew Johnson lacked Lincoln's qualities of greatness. While Lincoln had been open-minded, willing to listen to criticism, attuned to the currents of northern public opinion, and able to get along with all elements of his party, Johnson was stubborn, deeply racist, and insensitive to the opinions of others. If anyone was responsible for the wreck of his presidency, it was Johnson himself, first by establishing new governments in the South in which blacks had no voice whatsoever, and then refusing, when these governments sought to reduce freedpeople to a situation akin to slavery through the Black Codes, to heed the rising tide of northern concern. As congressional opposition mounted, Johnson refused to budge.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

2000s, If Lincoln Hadn't Died (2009)

“Hasan Nizami writes that after the suppression of a Hindu revolt at Kol (Aligarh) in 1193 AD, Aibak raised “three bastions as high as heaven with their heads, and their carcases became food for beasts of prey. The tract was freed from idols and idol-worship and the foundations of infidelism were destroyed.” In 1194 AD Aibak destroyed 27 Hindu temples at Delhi and built the Quwwat-ul-Islãm mosque with their debris. According to Nizami, Aibak “adorned it with the stones and gold obtained from the temples which had been demolished by elephants”. In 1195 AD the Mher tribe of Ajmer rose in revolt, and the Chaulukyas of Gujarat came to their assistance. Aibak had to invite re-inforcements from Ghazni before he could meet the challenge. In 1196 AD he advanced against Anahilwar Patan, the capital of Gujarat. Nizami writes that after Raja Karan was defeated and forced to flee, “fifty thousand infidels were despatched to hell by the sword” and “more than twenty thousand slaves, and cattle beyond all calculation fell into the hands of the victors”. The city was sacked, its temples demolished, and its palaces plundered. On his return to Ajmer, Aibak destroyed the Sanskrit College of Visaladeva, and laid the foundations of a mosque which came to be known as ADhãî Din kã JhoMpaDã. Conquest of Kalinjar in 1202 AD was Aibak’s crowning achievement. Nizami concludes: “The temples were converted into mosques… Fifty thousand men came under the collar of slavery and the plain became black as pitch with Hindus.””

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Hasan Nizami, quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231 Ch. 6

Men, Food, Hell

“We have all the essential elements of a high national career. The idea has been given out at the North, and even in the border States, that we are too small and too weak to maintain a separate nationality. This is a great mistake. In extent of territory we embrace five hundred and sixty-four thousand square miles and upward. This is upward of two hundred thousand square miles more than was included within the limits of the original thirteen States. It is an area of country more than double the territory of France or the Austrian empire. France, in round numbers, has but two hundred and twelve thousand square miles. Austria, in round numbers, has two hundred and forty-eight thousand square miles. Ours is greater than both combined. It is greater than all France, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain, including England, Ireland, and Scotland, together. In population we have upward of five millions, according to the census of 1860; this includes white and black. The entire population, including white and black, of the original thirteen States, was less than four millions in 1790, and still less in 76, when the independence of our fathers was achieved. If they, with a less population, dared maintain their independence against the greatest power on earth, shall we have any apprehension of maintaining ours now?”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Idea, Country

“How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candour in a story of early manhood which leaves out of account the home-sickness for nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions of amendment, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity.”

Evelyn Waugh book Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Life, Youth, Home, Mood

“The lack of understanding of the history of Blacks in the United States, including the variation of slave utilization, coupled with narrow theoretical orientation of some of the more recent social sciences studies has stimulated the limited conception of the black experience, past and present; this, in turn, paves the way for internal conflict”

Vera Mae Green (1928–1982) American anthropologist and academic

among Blacks
Gacs, Ute (1988). Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies. University of Illinois Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-252-06084-7.

Way, History, Understanding, Study

“So for now I'd like gays to just be part of conservatism, just like women are, just like blacks are, without a special designation.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Ann Coulter on GOProud at CPAC 2011 Question & Answer Session (Sep 16, 2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DHqEm0bV38. 2011

Women, Parting

“(the effort to abolish affirmative action) is led mostly by conscienceless politicians, publicity-seeking bigots, whites with individual gripes who find it easy to make trouble in a litigious society, and a handful of blacks who harbor doubts about their own intellectual merits.”

Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American journalist

Quoington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?", "The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-up Call" (1996)

Effort

“And indeed, if VSL is correct, black holes may have very different properties than we thought. Collapsing stars could have a totally different demise and die a rather eccentric death.”

João Magueijo (1967) Portuguese scientist

pg. 10
Faster than the Speed of Light

Death, Star

“Black feminism also contains a strong emphasis on the class differences that exist between women, because the vast majority of the Black population in the U. S. has always been a part of the working class, and disproportionately living in poverty, due to the economic consequences of racism.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Women, Strong, Parting

“[Anti-monopoly] is a movement inspired by a set of fools and black-mailers. To be sure, there are some men in it whose motives are good, if their sense is not. When I want to buy up any politician, I always find the Anti-Monopolists the most purchasable. They don't come so high.”

William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) American philanthropist

Quoted in Clarence P. Dresser, "Vanderbilt in the West" New York Times (9 October 1882).
Disputed

Men, Fools, Motivation, Sense

“In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

Women, Men, People, Democracy

“A fairy tale in terms of blood—a world in anamorphosis—a perversion of all rationality.… It’s unthinkable, senseless, like black magic and sorcery and thaumaturgy. It’s downright demented.”

S. S. Van Dine book The Bishop Murder Case

Ch 1
The Bishop Murder Case (1929)

World

“I am glad to be able to fortify my position on this point by the great name and ability of Theophilus Parsons, of the Harvard Law School. In discussing the necessity of negro suffrage at a recent public meeting in Boston, he says: "Some of the Southern States have among their statutes a law prohibiting the education of a colored man under a heavy penalty. The whole world calls this most inhuman, most infamous. And shall we say to the whites of those States, 'We give you complete and exclusive power of legislating about the education of the blacks; but beware, for if you lift them by education from their present condition, you do it under the penalty of forfeiting and losing your supremacy?' Will not slavery, with nearly all its evils, and with none of its compensation, come back at once? Not under its own detested name; it will call itself apprenticeship; it will put on the disguise of laws to prevent pauperism, by providing that every colored man who does not work in some prescribed way shall be arrested, and placed at the disposal of the authorities; or it will do its work by means of laws regulating wages and labor. However it be done, one thing is certain: if we take from the slaves all the protection and defence they found in slavery, and withhold from them all power of self-protection and self-defence, the race must perish, and we shall be their destroyers."”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

World, Education, School, Law

“You are the oveja negre, no? The black sheep?”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses (1992)

“Old Grimes is dead, that good old man
We never shall see more;
He used to wear a long black coat
All buttoned down before.”

Albert Gorton Greene (1802–1868) American judge

Old Grimes, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: Compare: "John Lee is dead, that good old man,— / We ne'er shall see him more; / He used to wear an old drab coat / All buttoned down before", Inscription in Matherne Churchyard, To the memory of John Lee, who died May 21, 1823; "Old Abram Brown is dead and gone,— / You'll never see him more; / He used to wear a long brown coat / That buttoned down before", James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 60.

Dead

“I always think I should get on it if I want to have kids. Because once you hit thirty it can be difficult to conceive — it can be dangerous. The best time to conceive is when you're a black teenager.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Rolling Stone (3 November 2005)

Thinking, Time

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

"Cornel West interviewed by bell hooks" in Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991)

People, World, Religion, Art

“Sometimes brothers get so hung up on the myth of revolution that they talk about bringing America to her knees and they can't even wipe out one police station. A lot of brothers play revolutionary; they read a little Fanon, a little Mao and some Marx. Although this information is necessary, it is not sufficient, for we must develop a new plan of revolution for black people here in America.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

The Quotable Karenga (1967)

People, Reading

“Darwin's racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution…. However, after much research, I do concede that you won't find anything in Darwin's writings that would indicate that he in any way felt blacks were to be treated as inferior or that his views of them were due to their skin color.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Color, Way

“I have a confession to make. When I came back to.... the beach at Trouville.... it seeemed nothing more than than a frightful masquerade.... If you have passed one month among the people condemned to hard work in the fields, with black bread and water, and you then find that gang of golden parasites with such a triumphant air, you can't help feeling a bit of pity.... Fortunately, dear friend, the Creator has spread a little of his splendid and warming light everywhere, and what I reproduce is not so much this world as the element that envelops it.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote in Boudin's letter to Ferdinand Martin, 28 August 1867; as cited in exh. text; 'Eugène Boudin', ed. Christoph Bode, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris, July 2013
'Nos petites poupées', Boudin called the rich and super-rich women from Paris who spent their summers in Deauville and Trouville at the beach
1850s - 1870s

People, World, Feeling, Light

“If I’m a young black man in South Central L. A., where poverty is rampant and unemployment is skyrocketing, I see that Washington’s promises of a year ago have gone unfulfilled, I see that perhaps for a second time, the court’s inability to mete out justice in a blind fashion, why shouldn’t I vent my anger?”

Bryant Gumbel (1948) American sportscaster

To U.S. Republican. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), April 15, 1993, Today. Real Video http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/projects/99/Gumbel4/segment1.ram

Justice, Fashion, Time, Anger

“Some men dream of wealth and power. I tell of days. Of woods taking me where they wanted to go, hawthorns scarlet with October, the lacy loveliness of hemlocks, old lanes gold with Autumn, fall colors like stained glass showing through the leaded lines of black branches, each tree a love, each leaf a now, the dry-bone look of maple twigs in winter, the silent snow. For more than seventy Indian summers I have begged each one not to go, even as I spoke, the leaves showered down around me.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Grouse Along the Tramroad (1986)

Love, Men, Dreams, Color

“When I die
let the black rag fly
raven falling
from the sky.”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

"Black Flag" in Collected Poems (1983)

Flying

“I don’t think a living being should suffer for the sake of fashion, period. End of story. When I realized what went into—not just, we’re not just even talking about a full-length fur coat, I’m talking about just … fur on your gloves or on your jacket or—what goes into making that little piece of fur ripped my heart out. And as humans, we have control. What if someone said, ‘Black skin is the new fur’?”

Taraji P. Henson (1970) American actress

Interview with PETA (27 January 2011); quoted in "Taraji P. Henson Bares All For PETA" https://teamyee.tv/taraji-p-henson-bares-all-for-peta/, TeamYee.tv.

Fashion, Thinking, Suffering, Heart

“I didn't fight this fight for the blacks, the whites or the Spanish, I fought the fight for the people. We're all God's children. I don't see color. I'm not a racist When I look at Gerry Cooney, I just see a man trying to take my head off.”

Larry Holmes (1949) American boxer

As quoted in "Sport: Larry Holmes: I Still Have It" by Tom Callahan in TIME (21 June 1982).

God, Children, People, Color

“It would be much better for everyone if the black vote was 'in play' and both major parties had to compete for it. As virtual captives of the Democrats since 1936, blacks have ended up being taken for granted by them and mostly ignored by Republicans.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Source: 2000s, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008), p. xiv

“A discordant mind, black with confusion and despair, would finish me off as thoroughly as the cold.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

Ch 7
Alone (1938)

Despair

“I have always been made out as a racist, someone who hates black people. I don't hate them. I grew up with them. I just know there are many differences between whites and the blacks and I will always believe it.”

Eugène Terre'Blanche (1941–2010) South African police officer, farmer, political activist, white supremacist

Interview by Antoinette Keyser http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=249083&area=/insight/insight__national/, (25 August 2005).

Hate, People

“Every time a Black Freedom Fighter is murdered or captured, the pigs try to create the impression that they have quashed the movement, destroyed our forces, and put down the Black Revolution. The pigs also try to give the impression that five or ten guerrillas are responsible for every revolutionary action carried out in amerika. That is nonsense. That is absurd. Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. Shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quentin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us. Many jobless Black veterans and welfare mothers are joining our ranks. Brothers and sisters from all walks of life, who are tired of suffering passively, make up the BLA.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life, Sister, Freedom, Suffering

“The suggestions of the shrewdest Democratic papers have proved unavailing in controlling the votes of the loyal whites and blacks of the south. Their innuendoes have been evaded. The people emphatically decline to dispose of their rights for a mess of pottage. In this particular the Democracy of the North found themselves foiled and their money needless. But with a spirit more demon-like than that of a Nero or a Caligula, there has been concocted another plan, destructive, ay, diabolical in its character, worthy only of hearts without regard for god or man, fit for such deeds as those deserving the name of men would shudder to perform. Is it asked, what are those deeds? Let those who liberally contributed to the supply of arms and ammunition in the late rebellious States answer the question. Soon after the close of the war there had grown up in the south a very widely-spread willingness to comply with the requirements of the law. But as the clemency and magnanimity of the general government became manifest once again did the monster rebellion lift its hydra head in renewed defiance, cruel and cowardly, fearing the light of day, hiding itself under the shadow of the night as more befitting its bloody and accursed work.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Men, Money, God, War

“In that strange island Iceland,—burst up, the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of barrenness and lava; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summertime; towering up there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean with its snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire;—where of all places we least looked for Literature or written memorials, the record of these things was written down.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Beauty, Literature, Memory, Sea

“Glenn Beck: How many people here identify themselves as African Americans?
[audience raises hands]
Glenn Beck: Why?
Panelist: It's interchangeable.
Glenn Beck: Why not identify yourself as Americans?
Panelist: But people can look at you and tell you're black, you can't escape that.
Glenn Beck: Yeah, but I don't identify myself as white or a white American.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2009-11-13
Beck: I don't identify as white, why do black people identify as black?
Media Matters for America
2009-11-13
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911130029
2000s, 2009

People

“The conflict between the theories of Surrealism & pure abstraction leads many to look upon one as black & bad & the other as white & good. Yet it seems to me that a good work of art has always contained both abstract & surrealist elements – just as it has both classical & romantic elements (order & surprise?)... Surrealism is widening the field of contemporary art & is giving more freedom to the artist (& perhaps what is not unimportant, – stretching the appreciation of the public). Abstraction is re-establishing fundamental laws; bringing back form to painting & sculpture. There are many products of surrealism which I personally dislike,.... but equally Unimportant to me are the empty decorations produced in the name of abstraction.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), pp. 112-113

Law, Art, Freedom, Painting

“The Rhine, with two long branches, stretches out and loses itself among inlets and hills, the boats of tourists and of industry smoke, white, black, and gray, and small, small, seem almost not to move; the silver clear, transparent water, calm and ordered, contrasts with all the rest.... the water gurgles, the sides of the boat are covered in spray, many people greet each other, white handkerchiefs are waved from on high, the hotels, the flags, the inscriptions, the hills and the pointed tips of the bell towers, everything seems unreal, untouchable.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

quote from a letter to Balla's family, 18 November 1912; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 307, note 36

People, Water

“In Sacramento, my brown was not halfway between black and white. On the leafy streets, on the east side of town, where my family lived, where Asians did not live, where Negroes did not live, my family's Mexican shades passed as various.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Family

“My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress, even in seven months - many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.

I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor - the middle one, gray, and half buried in heath - Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss, creeping up its foot - Heathcliff's still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Mr. Lockwood (Ch. XXXIV). (Closing lines).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Home, Imagination, Autumn, Grass

“[U]nder the Constitution in its most liberal interpretation, and admitting our cherished American doctrine of equal human rights, if a white man pleases to marry a black woman, the mere fact that she is black gives no one a right to interfere to prevent or set aside such marriage.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

HORACE GREELEY’S VIEWS ON VIRGINIA 2 https://archive.org/stream/horacegreeleysvi00gree#page/2/mode/2up (1872) 1870s

Marriage

“As far as transience is concerned... You see the whole story in those shoes, that's why I paint them so accurate. The physical attitude; crooked legs, a lump. Those shoes were talking to me, and then I thought: I can see that you were so and so big, but did you also had a wife? Children? What were you doing? And what really mattered to me is my own place between them. Between those stories, that mystery. That pitch-black background [in Jopie's paintings, till c.1979-80] - I had found it. A cry for attention. Those pants, that shirt, that background, that was: here I am. But then it become mannerism. So I carried on realistically but avoiding the black background at all costs. It is as Rutger Kopland says: Whoever found it did not look well. Now I want to paint people like this, like they are made of colored mud. Color spiritualizes.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Wat de vergankelijkheid betreft.. .Je ziet het hele verhaal in die schoenen, daarom schilder ik ze zo scherp. De lichamelijke houding; kromme poten, een knobbel. Die schoenen praatten tegen me, en dan dacht ik: ik kan zien dat je zo en zo groot was, maar had je ook een vrouw? Kinderen? Wat deed je? En waar het me in wezen dan om ging is mijn plekkie daartussen. Tussen die verhalen, dat mysterie. Die pikzwarte achtergrond [in zijn schilderijen, tot c. 1979-80]; ik had het gevonden. Een schreeuw om aandacht. Die broek, dat hemd, die achtergrond, dat was: hier ben ik. Maar dan word je een maniërist. Dus ik ben realistisch doorgegaan, maar koste wat het kost die zwarte achtergrond vermijdend. Het is zoals nl:Rutger Kopland zegt: Wie het gevonden heeft, heeft niet goed gezocht. Nu wil ik de mensen zo schilderen, als zijn ze van gekleurde modder. De kleur die vergeestelijkt.
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

Children, People, Color, Shoe

“Debbie Reynolds died a day after her daughter [Carrie Fisher] did! Black Mama's don't die cuz they kids do! They cry and say God don't make no mistakes!”

D. L. Hughley (1963) American actor and comedian

Commenting on the death of Carrie Fisher, and the death one day later of her mother Debbie Reynolds.
Source: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2016/12/29/dl-hughley-slammed-for-debbie-reynolds-tweet/95954690/

God, Daughters, Cry

“One rich light
Broke thro' the shadow of the tempest's wing,
While the black clouds, with gold and purple edged,
Caught every moment warmer hues, until
'Twas all one sparkling arch, and, like a king
In triumph o'er his foes, the Sun god sought
The blue depths of the sea; — the waters yet
Were ruffled with the storm, and the white foam
Yet floated on the billows, while the wind
Murmured at times like to an angry child,
Who sobs even in his slumber.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(2nd February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.4
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

God, Light, Water, Time

“After 200 years, the constitutional protection of the right of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is virtually gone. Today’s current terminology describing rights reflects this sad change. It is commonplace for politicians and those desiring special privileges to refer to: black rights, Hispanic rights, handicap rights, employee rights, student rights, minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, student rights, Asian-American rights, Jewish rights, AIDS victims’ rights, poverty rights, homeless rights, etc. Unless all the terms are dropped & we recognize that only an individual has rights, the solution to the mess in which we find ourselves will not be found. The longer we lack of definition of rights, the worse the economic and social problems will be.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Freedom Under Siege https://web.archive.org/web/20111229190300/http://www.buzzfeed.com/ccbaxter/22-facts-that-dont-jibe-with-ron-paul-being-a-rac-41xp (1987). 1980s

Life, Women, Happiness, Children

“In the year 1562 a cloud of black and deadly portent was thickening over France. Surely and swiftly she glided towards the abyss of the religious wars. None could pierce the future, perhaps none dared to contemplate it: the wild rage of fanaticism and hate, friend grappling with friend, brother with brother, father with son; altars profaned, hearth-stones made desolate, the robes of Justice herself bedrenched with murder. In the gloom without lay Spain, imminent and terrible.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 3 Jean Ribaut
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Hate, War, Justice, Rage

“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

Joseph Lowery (1921) American activist

Benediction at inauguration of US president Barack Obama, January 20, 2009, Washington DC.

Help

“Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

Reported in "Shirley Chisholm Kicks Off Campaign for U.S. Presidency" by Ronald E. Kisner, Jet‎, Vol. 41, no. 20 (Feb. 1972), p. 12.

“Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than Gone with the Wind, obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall" Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gods-and-generals-2003 of Gods and Generals (21 February 2003) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

War, World, Way, Hell

“After nearly a quarter of a century of prosperity under the Constitution, the spirit of slavery so far triumphed over the early principles and practices of the government that, in 1812, South Carolina and her followers in Congress succeeded in inserting the word 'white' in the suffrage clause of the act establishing a territorial government for Missouri. One by one the Slave States, and many of the free States, gave way before the crusade of slavery against negro citizenship. In 1817, Connecticut caught the infection, and in her constitution she excluded the negro from the ballot-box. In every other New England State his ancient right of suffrage has remained and still remains undisturbed. Free negroes voted in Maryland till 1833; in North Carolina, till 1835; in ennsylvania, till 1838. It was the boast of Cave Johnson of Tennessee that he owed his election to Congress in 1828 to the free negroes who worked in his mills. They were denied the suffrage in 1834, under the new constitution of Tennessee, by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-three. As new States were formed, their constitutions for the most part excluded the negro from citizenship. Then followed the shameful catalogue of black laws; expatriation and ostracism in every form, which have so deeply disgraced the record of legislation in many of the States.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Law, Way, Parting, Box

“For the first time a subject is present, not by virtue of its absence, but actually present, though its appearance is torn away, and only the structure bared. The Modern City! Precise, rectangular, squared, whether seen from above, below, or on the side; bright lights and sterilized life; Broadway, whites and blacks; and boogie-woogie; the underground music of the at once resigned and rebellious... Mondrian has left his white paradise, and entered the world.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

1942, on the late painting 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' of Piet Mondrian
Quote of Rothko, in Painters Objects, Robert Motherwell, pp. 95, 96; as cited in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, pp. 128-129
1940's

Life, World, Music, Light

“You may not believe it,
But I don't believe in miracles anymore.
And when I think about it,
I don't believe I ever did for sure.
All the things I've said in songs,
All the purple prose you bought from me.
Reality's just black and white.
The sentimental things I'd write
Never meant that much to me.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

This Train Don't Stop There Anymore
Song lyrics, Songs from the West Coast (2001)

Thinking, Reality

“Lawrence O'Donnell: Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily, as a student at Morehouse, between 1963 and 1967, actively participated in the kinds of protests that got African Americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watch black college students from around the country and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered fighting for the right of African Americans. Do you regret sitting on those sidelines at that time?
Herman Cain: Lawrence, your attempt to say that I sat on the sidelines is an irrelevant comparison that you are trying to deduce from that—
Lawrence O'Donnell: It's in your book. It's in your book.
Herman Cain: Now, Lawrence, I know what's in my book. Now, let me ask you a question. Did you expect every black student and every black college in America to be out there, in the middle of every fight? The answer is no. So for you to say, why was I sitting on the sidelines, I think that that is an inaccurate deduction that you are trying to make. You didn't know, Lawrence, what I was doing with the rest of my life. You didn't know what my family situation may have been. Maybe, just maybe, I had a sick relative, which is why I might not have been sitting in, or doing the Freedom Rides. So what I'm saying, Lawrence, is, with all due respect my friend, your deduction is incorrect, and it's not logical, okay?”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

referring to "This is Herman Cain!" recounting that Herman read about sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and followed his father's advice to "stay out of trouble".

Life, Books, Family, Question

“The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde
They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide
They washed up a pale thin girl
Alone in her ivory tower
Scratching her skin with the thorns that grow
On the stems of the wild flowers
What became of the love we knew?
We beat the swine black and blue
You and I
Me and you
What became of the love we knew?
What became of the working class?
Nike, Reebok, Adidas
Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy
Hooray for the 21st Century”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Hooray for the 21st Century"
Lyrics and poetry

Love, Girl, Flowers, Swine

“Black rage is largely a response not to white racism but to black failure.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 8

Failure, Rage

“Experimentalists dream of some spectacular discovery such as the proof of the existence of black holes to justify the more than eight billion dollars it has cost to build the LHC.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 5, Conventional Black Holes, p. 88

Dreams

“There's a few reasons you don't see black people at my shows. One is because, obviously, black people have slower internet connections. I mean, that would be my guess. I don't know.”

Dave Chappelle (1973) American comedian

Comedy specials, The Age of Spin: Dave Chappelle Live at the Hollywood Palladium (2017)

People

“If you have ever been robbed by a black teenage male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

1992
Terrorist Update
Ron Paul Political Report, quoted in [1996-05-23, Newsletter excerpts offer ammunition to Paul's opponent, Alan, Bernstein, Houston Chronicle, A33, http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1996_1343749/campaign-96-u-s-house-newsletter-excerpts-offer-am.html] and * 2011-12-24
Newt Gingrich Presses Ron Paul to Explain Racist Newsletters
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/newt-gingrich-presses-ron-paul-to-explain-racist-newsletters/
Disputed, Newsletters, Ron Paul Political Report

“But I've noticed something with other artists who do use the whole range of forms of colours and black - in Albers, for instance, who experiments with yellow, red, blue, the whole scale. Of course I love his colour paintings, but when I see a black-and-white such as 'The Homage to a Black and White Square' [ Josef Albers painted more versions], I like that best, you know. I think it has something to do with deciding just exactly what you really like best. There is always that wonderful element of doubt. I like the black painters really, even if they did work in color.... Velasquez.... also Tintoretto, and Rembrandt... Goya..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote of Kline in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', Spring 1963; as cited in Interviews with American Artists, David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 61-62
1960's

Love, Color, Thinking, Painting

“Liberal economists conceive of societies as black boxes connected by exchange rates; as long as exchange rates are correct, what goes on inside the black box is regarded as not very important.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Ten, Emergent International Economic Order, p. 393

Box

“I am proud that my daughter believes, as I do, that hungry children should be fed whether they are Black Panthers or White Republicans”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Ottawa Journal, 5 October 1969.

Children, Daughters

“If I could find anything blacker than black, I'd use it.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote of Turner, c. 1842-43; as cited by Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1879) The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A. p. 296
his reply after the prominent English marine painter Clarkson Stanfield had complained, that Turner in his painting 'Peace - Burial at Sea' - he painted after the burial of his artist-friend David Wilkie - had painted the sails in the steamer as black as possible
1821 - 1851

“No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush, MichaelMoore.com, 2 September 2005, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/vacation-is-over-an-open-letter-from-michael-moore-to-george-w-bush]
2005

People, Imagination

“"4 example the other day i saw a black person walking down the street and i was like "omg a negro" but instead of walking on the other side i said "what would rumsfeld do?" so i stayed on the sidewalk. when he came up to me i wanted to show him that i have no problems with people of color so i said "hey" and offered him my spare change before he could even ask."”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

i love donald rumsfeld http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=af_racist The Best Page in the Universe, April Fools

People, Color, Problem, Change

“See the fear and terror as black men run. White is right in the white man’s world, on the big white screen.”

Robert Banks (1966) American filmmaker

MPG: Motion Picture Genocide

Men, World, Fear

“You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind…. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, vol. 7, 1863, p. 290.
1860s

Family, Intelligence

“I love you more than bears love honey,
I love you more than Jews love money,
I love you more than Asians are good at math.
I love you even if it's not hip,
I love you more than black guys don't tip,
I love you like Puerto Ricans need baths.”

Sarah Silverman (1970) American comedian and actress

Satirical song
Jesus Is Magic (2005)

Love, Money, Guy

“The men of the Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year's hard work and pausing a moment from the earning of their daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask in the name of ten million the privilege of a hearing. In the last year the work of the Negro hater has flourished in the land. Step by step the defenders of the rights of American citizens have retreated. The work of stealing the black man's ballot has progressed and the fifty and more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the nation's capital. Discrimination in travel and public accommodation has so spread the some of our weaker brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color discrimination as such and are simply whispering for ordinary decencies.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Niagara Movement, Address to the Country

Men, Color, Travel

“After supper we are sitting close to the church in a quiet spot. As if from a distance we hear prayers and singing. The monks are holding their vesper services. Then it falls silent, wonderfully silent!
The sun has already set. … We are quiet, too. … A door is closed somewhere. A man's, then a woman's voice. Children are praying! My dear Jesus! Then it falls silent again. Wonderfully silent!
The night spreads its wide, black wings over the land.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Nach dem Abendbrot sitzen wir an der Kirche in einem stillen Winkel. Wie von ferne hören wir Gebet und Singen. Die Mönche halten ihre Abendandacht. Und dann wird es still, wunderbar still!
Die Sonne ist schon untergegangen. … Auch wir schweigen. … Irgendwo wird eine Tür geschlossen. Eine Männer-, dann eine Frauenstimme. Kinderbeten! Du lieber Jesus mein! Dann wird es wieder still. Wunderbar still!
Die Nacht legt ihre breiten, schwarzen Flügel auf das Land.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Children, Singing, Sun, Night

“[Donald Trump is] clearly racist… It fits into a pattern that we have seen since the beginning of his career, maybe through his father's career, frankly. There's been a consistency, pattern of harsh judgment against black and brown people.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

As quoted in "Shields and Brooks on Trump's 's***hole' comments, 'Fire and Fury' fallout" https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/shields-and-brooks-on-trumps-shole-comments-fire-and-fury-fallout#transcript (14 January 2018), PBS Newshour 2010s

People

“I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.
But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us.
But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting.
For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts…”

David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier

David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html

Women, Happiness, Children, Family

“And the Lord Juss cried aloud in his agony, "Fling me to Tartarus, deliver me to the black infernal Furies, let them blind me, seethe me in the burning lake. For so should there yet be hope. But in this horror of Nothing is neither hope nor life nor death nor sleep nor waking, for ever. For ever."”

Eric Rücker Eddison book The Worm Ouroboros

Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Ch. 28 : Zora Rach Nam Psarrion, p. 427

Life, Death, Hope, Sleep

“Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp of the river. That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which had accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn of the first bend above. The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air, together with a sense of unlimited space opening free beyond the threshold of sandbanks below the Nore. The waters of the sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short there, surrendering the salt tide to the needs, the artifices, the contrivances of toiling men. Wharves, landing-places, dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow each other continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men’s work fills the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale. The water-way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke and dust.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Tilbury / Gravesend to London Bridge
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, Hope, Way, Soul

“Republican Party hasn't been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.”

Joy Behar (1942) US comedian, writer and actress

The View, October 4, 2011. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/04/joy_behar_to_herman_cain_gop_not_black_friendly.html

Country

“But the violence which we chose to adopt was not terrorism. We who formed Umkhonto were all members of the African National Congress, and had behind us the ANC tradition of non-violence and negotiation as a means of solving political disputes. We believe that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it, and not to one group, be it black or white. We did not want an interracial war, and tried to avoid it to the last minute. If the Court is in doubt about this, it will be seen that the whole history of our organization bears out what I have said, and what I will subsequently say, when I describe the tactics which Umkhonto decided to adopt.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, I am Prepared to Die (1964)

War, People, History

“Except in a few metropolitan ghettos, my experience has been that few Negroes have any interest at all in this organization, much less give any allegiance to its pessimistic doctrines. The Black Muslims are a quasi-religious, sociopolitical movement that has appealed to some Negroes who formerly were Christians. For the first time, the Negro was presented with a choice of a religion other than Christianity. What this appeal actually represented was an indictment of Christian failures to live up to Christianity's precepts; for there is nothing in Christianity, nor in the Bible, that justifies racial segregation. But when the Negroes' genuine fighting spirit rose during 1963, the appeal of the Muslims began to diminish.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

In reference to the Black Muslims who advocated Black Nacionalism. At his Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html 1960s

Religion, Failure, Time, Fight

“There's a lot of dealings with police officers right now. I don’t think all cops are bad. You know, I think there’s some great cops out there, who do everything in their power to uphold the badge and uphold the honor and protect the people in society. But there are bad cops, and I think that also needs to be addressed. I think the police officers we have right now, you know, some of it is being brought to light, because of video cameras, everybody has a camera phone. But these are things a lot of us have dealt with our whole lives. And I think right now is a perfect time to deal with it. The climate we're in, everybody's being more accepting, you know, so I think the ignorance should stop. I think people realize that, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. So, you know, before we're black, white, Asian, Polynesian, Latino. We're humans. So, it's up to us to stop it.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Press conference (16 September 2015), as quoted in "Video: Richard Sherman speaks passionately on Black Lives Matter" https://web.archive.org/web/20150917000340/http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/video-richard-sherman-speaks-passionately-on-black-lives-matter/ (16 September 2015), by Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington. Press conference (16 September 2015)

People, Thinking, Light, Time

“Currently, my machines are black and sometimes gentle, if not sexy or exuding a contained violence; I finally found the technical means for accomplishing this.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Quotes, 1960's

“With the black ones [his 'Black Paintings'] I was interested in getting complexity without their revealing much – in the fact that there was much to see but not much showing. I wanted to show a painting that could have the dignity of not calling attention to itself. In both the blacks and the whites [paintings] there was none of the familiar aggressiveness of art that says, 'Well, here it is, whether you like it or not.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), pp. 203-204

Art, Painting

“As a matter of fact, black-out of well documented, acutely argued contributions … continues with renewed vigour. A certain leading library of the country of late instituted an enquiry as to how a particular book came to be utilized by the Vishva Hindu Parishad.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources (1993)

Books, Country

“My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my "Blackness" than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

" Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community http://pt.scribd.com/doc/2305083/Princeton-Educated-Blacks-and-the-Black-Community", senior thesis, Princeton University (1985), p. 14-15 quoted in "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" by Jeffrey Ressner at Politico.com (23 February 2008) http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42FC5818-3048-5C12-005E33B3C0F4E64B 1980s

Feeling

“Now comes the objection which you hear in the mouths of Democrats everywhere. Negro equality! Negro equality! The "Black Republicans" are in favor of negro equality!”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838&ndash;64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA239 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 239 1860s, Speech (October 1860)

“In all the Romish [Catholic] countries of Europe, France, Italy, Germany, etc., the God Christ, as well as his mother, are described in their old pictures and statues to be black. The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black. If the reader doubts my word he may go to the Cathedral at Moulins—to the famous Chapel of the Virgin at Loretto—to the Church of the Annunciata—the Church at St. Lazaro or the Church of St. Stephen at Genoa—to St. Francisco at Pisa—to the Church at Brixen in Tyrol and to that at Padua—to the Church of St. Theodore at Munich—to a church and to the Cathedral at Augsburg, where a black virgin and child as large as life—to Rome and the Borghese chapel of Maria Maggiore—to the Pantheon—to a small chapel of St. Peters on the right hand side on entering, near the door; and in fact, to almost innumerable other churches in countries professing the Romish religion.”

Godfrey Higgins book Anacalypsis

Vol. I., p. 138.
Anacalypsis (published 1833)

Life, God, Religion, Christ

“I'm interested in the mass and color, the black and the white, the edges happen because the forms get as quiet as they can be.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Early 1960s : "Ellsworth Kelly, a Retrospective", ed. Diane Waldman, Guggenheim Museum, New York 1997, p. 11
1950 - 1968

Color

“Intra-racially, we consistently recognized our differences. It is quite counter-factual to suggest that such differences have not existed throughout our history. Indeed, when I was on the other side of the ideological divide, arguing strenuously with my grandfather that the revolution was imminent and that we all had to stick together as black people, he was quick to remind me that he had lived much longer than I had and during far more difficult times, and that, in any case, it took all kinds to make a world.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

People, World, History, Time

“It is the system of great landed estates which invented and sustains the trafficking of whites and blacks who sell and buy men. … It is this system which in the colonies gives the blacks of our plantations only a blow with a whip and a morsel of bread.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

C'est la grande propriété qui a inventé et soutient le trafic des blancs et des noirs qui vend et achète les hommes... C'est elle qui dans les colonies donne aux nègres de nos plantations plus de coup de fouet que de morceau de pain.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 19, 27082 2892-7]
On property

Men

“I personally would say that the quickest way to wipe out a group of people is to put them on a soul food diet. One of the tragedies is that the very folks in the black community who are most sophisticated in terms of the political realities in this country are nonetheless advocates of “soul food.” They will lay down a heavy rap on genocide in America with regard to black folks, then walk into a soul food restaurant and help the genocide along.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Source: Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973), p. 81

People, Food, Way, Soul

“They call us thieves, but we did not rob and murder millions of Indians by ripping off their homeland, then call ourselves pioneers. They call us bandits, but it is not we who are robbing Africa, Asia, and Latin America of their natural resources and freedom while the people who live there are sick and starving. The rulers of this country and their flunkies have committed some of the most brutal, vicious crimes in history. They are the bandits. They are the murderers. And they should be treated as such. These maniacs are not fit to judge me, Clark, or any other Black person on trial in amerika. Black people should and, inevitably, must determine our destinies.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

People, History, Nature, Freedom

“In the past decade the distinction between connotation and denotation has been blurred by politics. The definitions of words should not change with every shift in the winds of public sentiment. Our society has already suffered from four decades of Situational Ethics. Heaven help us in this new era of Situational Definitions. A rocket scientist or military engineer can teach you about Sympathetic Detonations, but it is 21st Century television commentators who have introduced us to the era of Sympathetic Denotations. We now live in an Orwellian world where a semi-auto rifle is arbitrarily called an "assault rifle" if it has black plastic furniture, where a standard capacity magazine is called a "high capacity" magazine, where the confiscation and redistribution of wealth is dubbed "fairness." This also a new age when folks who are given free health care, HD televisions, free cell phones, and enough money to be able to afford air conditioning are deemed to be "living in poverty."”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

The fluidity of our language is evidence that America is sliding into oblivion. Hold fast to the true meaning of words and phrases, or we are doomed. Incendiary Words: Of Detonations and Denotations https://survivalblog.com/incendiary_words_of_detonations_and_denotations/ Survivalblog, 27 May 2013

Money, Health, Age, World

“A pretext presented itself; some insult needed to be avenged, or some debt to be collected. Six battleships, fourteen cruisers, and eighteen transports sailed up the mouth of the river Hippopotamus. Six hundred canoes vainly opposed the landing of the troops. Admiral Vivier des Murenes' cannons produced an appalling effect upon the blacks, who replied to them with flights of arrows, but in spite of their fanatical courage they were entirely defeated. Popular enthusiasm was kindled by the newspapers which the financiers subsidised, and burst into a blaze. Some Socialists alone protested against this barbarous, doubtful, and dangerous enterprise. They were at once arrested.”

Anatole France book Penguin Island

Book VII : Modern Times, Ch. IX : The Final Consequences
Penguin Island (1908)

Courage

“There are no white skins, and there are no black skins. Humans skins are of different shades of orange.”

Neil Harbisson (1984) Catalan-Irish musician, artist and activist

As quoted in El Punt (28 January 2012). "La teva cara em sona" http://www.elpuntavui.cat/noticia/article/5-cultura/19-cultura/500466-la-teva-cara-em-sona.html

“Any effort, policy or program that has as a prerequisite the acceptance of the notion that blacks are inferior is a non-starter with me. I do not believe that kneeling is a position of strength. Nor do I believe that begging is an effective tactic. I am confident that the individual approach, not the group approach, is the better, more acceptable, more supportable and less dangerous one. This approach is also consistent with the underlying principles of this country and the guarantees of freedom through government by consent. I, like Frederick Douglass, believe that whites and blacks can live together and be blended into a common nationality.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Confidence, Support, Effort, Freedom

“It is only when death releases the true poet from the embarrassing condition of being at once immortal and alive in the flesh that the people are prepared to honour him; and his spirit as it passes is saluted by a spontaneous display of public emotion. This explains the heavy black headlines in the Press of March 1944: ALUN LEWIS THE POET IS DEAD. Search the back-files and you will find no preparatory announcement: ALUN LEWIS WRITES GREAT POETRY.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

Robert Graves, Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945) p. 7.
Criticism

Death, People, Search, Dead

“I wanted to photograph this subject because the signs’ shrieking blatancy literally cried out for a visual record. To my mind the faded, yellowing paper and the red paint were not particularly paint, able. In black and white the signs shouted, clamored for attention, in visual anarchy. At the same time, the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

New Guide to Better Photography, 1953.

Business, Sense, Chance, Time

“The Bush plan is economic treason against the American worker. That "civil rights leaders" are silent about the dispossession of the black working class, that unions are not marching to denounce this sellout of blue-collar and white-collar America, only tells us that the amorality of the transnational corporation has infected both. Solidarity be damned, it is all about money now.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Money

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Speech on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)

Love, Wisdom, Justice, Feeling

“The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn’t seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars.
He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Star, Time

“I don't think of my work as calligraphic. Critics also describe Jackson and De Kooning as calligraphic painters but calligraphy has nothing to do with us. It's interesting that the Oriental critics never say this. The Oriental idea of space is an infinite space; it is not painted space, and ours is. In the first place, calligraphy is writing and I am not writing. People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote, (1958)
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

People, Idea, Thinking, Painting

“You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I would like to deride humanity, nothing less. And this with the simplest means, in black and white. At the same time - oh blasphemy - I would like to attack our Lord adequately.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote in a letter to his friend de:Hans Bloesch, 1898; as cited in Das Frühwerk 1883-1922 (The early works 1888-1922), Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1979, p. 47
Klee originally aspired to become a satirist, not a painter.
1895 - 1902

Time

“I think the most important thing that G. W. Bush has done is what he's done that's good for America: he has stood against this country's enemies. I don't remember on September the 12th that we counted the bodies in terms of who was black and who was white. Thank God that day we remembered that we were all of us Americans — and G. W. Bush has been a president standing against that evil for the sake of all Americans.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, July 12, 2004. http://renewamerica.us/archives/media/interviews/04_07_12hc.htm. 2009

God, Thinking, Evil, Country

Quotes about blackness page 21

Quotes about blackness
page 21