African american Quote by Jonathan Capehart

Any Black person who thinks there is a loophole to avoid paying the respectability tax is delusional. Recognizing that doesn't make you any less…

— Jonathan Capehart

“Respectability politics is the dogged belief that if black people just shape up, dress right, and act right, racists would suddenly have a dramatic…

— Nikesh Shukla

The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from…

— Kenneth Clark

When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

From the moment we were first dumped in Jamestown and had our teeth checked before getting sold off and later considered three-fifths of a…

— John Ridley

That one lesson that African American communities have learned over the centuries in America is that you can't just take for granted that things…

— Ben H. Winters

African-Americans are being disproportionately affected by, you know, the kind of misuse and abuse of power.

— Ras Baraka

“Americans are generally incapable of perceiving class differences among blacks and are quick to ascribe antisocial underclass behavior to all African Americans.”

— Leon Dash

“The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not…

— Edward E. Baptist

It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.

— Thomas Sowell

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the…

— Eleanor Holmes Norton

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

— Walter Lippmann