Amanda Seales Quotes

Slaves and the descendants of slaves created world pop culture. Let's keep it real and be very respectful about that.

To me, Harlem is one of the most important places on the earth, particularly when it comes to talking about African Americans.

As a child, I experienced black culture as many people did in America: on the TV, radio, and stages.

I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.

There is a distinctive African American culture that has roots in Africa and evolved on American soil.

I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.

In the imagination, Harlem will always be the spiritual capital of black excellence in America.

Black History Month could focus less on slavery and civil rights and more on the Harlem Renaissance and everything we have achieved. I want to know about the whole black experience.

Black culture has been a huge influence in my life.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms; its humor; its music.

Typically, there's this perspective among writers - and black writers: there's this idea that there is one person - and maybe beyond writers - among blacks, there is always one person who everyone should go to learn about all things black.

Blacks in America want to forget about slavery - the stigma, the shame. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, and that is the blues.

I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.

There is no monolithic black culture. It's completely different for someone born in Harlem to someone born in Houston or London with one exception, which is that people contributing to black culture have the experience of being black.

Manhattan was the capital of the twentieth century for black writers, artists, and intellectuals as much as it was for their white counterparts.

My parents grew up during the Harlem renaissance.

BET was a touchstone for me and a lot of my friends - it was a place you could go to see exactly what being black in 1992 and 1996 was like and what it was supposed to look like.

Harlem's streets lead backward, into history, straight to a work such as 'This Was Harlem.'

From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

I love 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X.' That was like the only black book we read in high school.

I do consider myself part of black history.

My composition often goes toward the black middle class or the black super-wealthy or strong historical black figures.

I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.

I'm an old fan of the Negro spirituals.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.