John Henrik Clarke Quotes

What about a white South African who comes here from Africa. Is he an African American?

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

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.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself.

I am a Canadian, a man and a Black man in that order.

What after all am I. Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates black and white in America.

The Negro needs a Nation and a country of his own, where he can best show evidence of his ability in the art of human progress. Scattered as an unmixed and unrecognized part of alien nations and civilizations is but to demonstrate his imbecility, and point him out as an unworthy derelict, fit neither for the society of Greek, Jew nor Gentile.

The effort we make in trying to get white people to let us alone or invest in us is looking pretty futile…. I am a reluctant separatist

We are better off than all the other Black people in the entire world. We are the hope and aspiration of Blacks in the rest of the world.

I am neither a Serb nor a Bulgarian, I am a South Slav.

The true Negro does not want integration... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

I just want to tell black stories.

People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.

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.

We need to recognize what Elijah Muhammad said, listen to his words: "We are a nation in a nation." Why not use these 22 million at that time - 50 million people's power for their eternal salvation instead of temporary enjoyment with the same wicked people who murder our people?

Being Nigerian is a strong part of my identity. Being American is a strong part of my identity. And there are important parts of who I am that really have nothing to do with my national connection.

I don't call myself Latin, I call myself Puerto Rican.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American.

Only when I came to America did I think of myself as British.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.

I was born in America, but I consider myself a Filipino.