John Henrik Clarke Quotes

'Strictly Business' is about a young black man who is learning about himself, and that applies to a lot of young black men, those who are trying to find jobs. This film gives them a good look at that situation.

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the Negro slave set free by the proclamation of President Lincoln. How could you Americans have been so blind as to leave the Negro slave without the tools to work out his own salvation ….Without property of any kind he cannot education himself or his children.

I come from an acting family, my father was an actor, and I had to fight my way and just create my own identity.

Like everywhere in the world, people of the Middle East aspire to liberty and justice. They wish to have a better life and a decent education for their children.

I'm glad to take on the role of a domestic because many of your black leaders, your educators, your professionals came from domestic parents who made sacrifices to see that their children didn't go through what they did.

Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who's supposed to make those choices.

My grandfather worked in a shoe factory - he was an Italian immigrant. My father was the first to go to college in the family.

There was a time I was no longer going to be black. I was going to be an 'intellectual.' When I was first looking around for colleges, thinking of colleges I couldn't afford to go to, I was thinking of being a philosopher. I began to understand then that much of my feelings about race were negative.

Education brings about opportunity, and in turn inspiration.

I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.

I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

As a little girl growing up in the Deep South, my mother told me that my future lay in my education. And she was right.

Most black families went from the South to the city. My family went from the South to the city to the suburbs because they wanted their children to have the realization of the suburban lifestyle. What does it mean that that doesn't actually protect you?

I broke the cycle of poverty thanks to education.

Writing about where I was from and the people I knew was not something that would have occurred to me early on, because like so many Southerners of that period - the Sixties - I rejected those things when I went north.

I am Dusty's son, but I learned the hard way I was never going to be 'The American Dream.' That was difficult for me, and I made some molehills into mountains.

My own ambitions were eclectic. My father ran a steel plant, and I was expected to study metallurgy and end up at the steel plant when I finished high school at age 15. Despite my proficiency at science, I decided against it and instead went on to study filmmaking.

I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.

I'm not really into politics, but if I had my own country, I would make sure all my people were educated and figuring out what they love to do, and focusing on that.

School was always a major player in my personal journey. It allowed me to open up to the world, and also social mobility. It allowed me to enrich myself, to read, learn and understand.

Once I accepted music was my path, I rebelled by wanting to do it my own way. I also didn't think it was respectful to my father's career and creativity to assume that I could jump on the back of all he had worked his entire life for.

I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it