John Henrik Clarke Quotes

I am a Nubian.

I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon.

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family.

I'm grounded in who I am, and I am a confident black man. A confident, Nigerian, black, chocolate man. I'm proud of my heritage, and no man can take that away from me.

As much as I'm a black person from America, I'm a black person from Africa, too.

If the American Negro is to have a culture of his own he will have to leave America to get it.

One of the things that made the Black Muslim movement grow was its emphasis upon things African. This was the secret to the growth of the Black Muslim movement. African blood, African origin, African culture, African ties. And you'd be surprised - we discovered that deep within the subconscious of the black man in this country, he is still more African than he is American.

I don't use the term "black" very often. I use the term African-American more than I use "black".

Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I'm a black man in America.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

I'm tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro - that's the Scotch-Irish part.

My family is part Creole, and we're Indian, and we're also very, very black. My father was so black, he was blue.

So the Negro race has continued, and today is the day of the Negro as far as the world is concerned. They have influenced the generations of time; they have mixed their blood with many peoples, until there are many peoples not able to hold the priesthood.

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Afro-American

I'm black, and it's a very important part of what I am. I'm not embarrassed about it.

My mother is black, from Grenada, so my blackness was always there, but It wasn't until I started hanging with the upperclassmen black actors at my high school that I really got my roots in being a black American, which is a distinctly different identity and experience.

People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.

Not only did I always know I was black, I always knew we were and are beautiful, culturally rich, and creators of everything from the sciences to the arts.

The one thing that I learned very young was to own my identity. And, I knew, I'm Asian through and through. There's nothing I needed to prove.

When you're Jamaican, you don't consider yourself African American even though everyone else considers you that.

I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here.

If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.