J. C. Watts Quotes

Just because a black man is running the RNC doesn't mean black folks are going to, 'Oh, OK, I will be a Republican.' Just as with the election of President Obama. All the problems and concerns that are very important to African Americans don't get solved overnight.

The establishment wonders why we can't get more of the black vote. It's because it's not doing the things necessary to establish a deeper relationship with the black community. Most black people don't think alike. Most black people just vote alike.

I have often said one of the reasons more blacks don't support Republicans is because they don't trust the GOP establishment.

We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago.

My administration will tackle these issues in consultation with the black communities of London.

Michael Jordan brings millions of dollars when he shows up in an arena. Since money is how we judge people, he's very valuable. But while that's happening, Rome is burning within the black community.

All too often the Democratic Party has taken the black vote for granted, and all too often the Republican Party has written it off.

And for far too long, the Democrats have had a monopoly on black votes in this country.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.

It would not be a bad idea if bankers were to go and sit occasionally with politicians in their political surgeries, where they might get a sense of the injustice that some of the community feel about the banks.

Republicans think that the NAACP is the only voice in the black community. It is a voice in the black community. But it's not the only voice.

The Democratic Party has taken the black community for granted and said, 'This is the most loyal constituency we have. They're not going anywhere.' But the Republican Party has said, 'That's the most loyal constituency Democrats have. They're not going anywhere. We've got to win without them.'

The more I ponder some of the boneheaded decisions GOP candidates have made of late, I can't bring myself to believe that they are serious about capturing more than about 8 percent of the black vote.

If you are a representative, and poor people don’t vote, you’re not going to pay particular attention to the needs of the poor.

We'll get out the [black] vote, but we need the white vote to win.

One goal of empowerment is to gain influence in as many elections as possible.... Beware of plans that pack you into super-minority districts, that ghettoize minorities.

If we don't like what the Republicans do, we need to get in there and change it.... By the turn of the century it'll be a 95 percent white Republican Party and a 99 percent black Democratic Party. That's not what we need.

I don't want to draw nigger districts. I'm not going to draw a honky Republican district and I'm not going to draw a nigger district if I can help it.

The natural result of people preferring one of their own race is that a minority race president will find it hard to get elected, and so it's something we should do something about and which we can do something about.

In some communities, I show up, and they say, 'Well, we haven't seen our Democrat congressman in 10 years.'

I want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community.

What I see is that the Democratic Party takes working class communities for granted, they take people of color for granted, and they just assume that we're going to turn out no matter how bland or half-stepping these proposals are.

There was a lot of feeling that with an African-American president, life on the South Side of Chicago would be radically different.

For too long, some lazy politicians have engaged leaders of Muslim communities as a shortcut to engaging disenfranchised Muslim citizens.