African Americans

"I occasionally tweet very vociferously about land-use decisions in this city. And a lot of that’s inspired just by actually seeing, like, 70 percent, 80 percent of lots in the city. Like, I’ve actually seen much of the built environment of Charlottesville just from biking around."

"becoming someone whose primary mode of getting around here is on a bicycle has sort of, like, made me much more aggressively, you know, pro-density, anti-cars, anti-parking. Because it just becomes like a waste. You see it as like the waste of space that it is."

"I just became super attuned to how much space cars take up in a way that I just don’t think people appreciate. It’s very easy to say we need more parking in a place, but there’s not that much conversation of, like, what you’re giving up when you do that. And I think being a biker or pedestrian helps you see what actually you’re giving up by prioritizing car infrastructure."

"Donald Trump's false claims of electoral fraud in the wake of the 2020 presidential election were an expression of the idea that only certain majorities are real majorities, that only some Americans deserve to hold power. And while Trump lost and left office, the idea persists. Rather than mobilize new voters or persuade existing ones, Republicans throughout the country have set about restricting access to the forms of voting that helped Democrats win in traditionally Republican states like Georgia and Arizona. In Michigan, likewise, Republican lawmakers want to change the way the state distributes its Electoral College votes to nullify the influence of Detroit on the final result."

"Republicans stepped onto this path after America elected its first Black president, and they thereafter embraced a racist demagogue and his attacks on the legitimacy of the nation's multiracial character; these actions speak to how the threads of history tie past and present together."

"Big, massive relief bill was passed, $1.9-trillion, by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress, and then the Republicans in Congress are going on about Dr. Seuss or whatever...I think the right response is just not even to engage it. To say, “You guys can talk about that if you want, but here are actual problems that we’re trying to solve.”"

"the price of equality, or at least of the promise of an equal society, is vigilance against those who would make government the tool of hierarchy. And, in turn, we must recognize that this struggle-to secure democracy against privilege on the one hand, and to secure privilege against democracy on the other-is the unresolvable conflict of American life. It is the push and pull that will last for as long as the republic stands."

"There is a homegrown ideology of reaction in the United States, inextricably tied to our system of slavery. And while that ideology no longer carries the explicit racism of the past, the basic framework remains: fear of rival political majorities; of demographic "replacement"; of a government that threatens privilege and hierarchy."

""The central question that emerges," the National Review's founding editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote in 1957, amid congressional debate over the first Civil Rights of the modern era, "is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is yes-the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." He continued: "It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority." It was a strikingly blunt defense of Jim Crow and affirmation of white supremacy from the father of the conservative movement. Later, when key civil rights questions had been settled by law, Buckley would essentially renounce these views, praising the movement and criticizing race-baiting demagogues like George C. Wallace. Still, his initial impulse-to give white political minorities a veto not just over policy but over democracy itself-reflected a tendency that would express itself again and again in the conservative politics he ushered into the mainstream, emerging when political, cultural, and demographic change threatened a narrow, exclusionary vision of American democracy."

"The speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, Robin Vos, made his point more explicitly: "If Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority-we would have all five constitutional officers, and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature." The argument is straight-forward: Their mostly white voters should count. Other voters-Black people and other people of color who live in cities-shouldn't."

"Arguably the most prominent and accomplished of these planter-politicians was John Calhoun...On this defense of the prerogatives of the Southern section of the nation, Calhoun built an entire theory of government. Seeing the threat democracy posed to slavery, he set out to limit democracy...The problem, in Calhoun's eyes, was that the will of the majority, as expressed in the House of Representatives and the election of the president, had too much power. It had to be curbed, lest it overrun this "true and perfect voice of the people." And those "people" whose voices must be heard, of course, were those like him. Those with power. Those with property. Those who enslaved others."

"A multiracial coalition of Black, brown, and white Americans had defeated Trump and put Biden and Kamala Harris, the first woman and first woman of color to become vice president, in the White House, and the president's supporters, with his direct encouragement, stormed the national legislature to try to nullify the result."

"The larger implication is clear enough: a majority made up of liberals and nonwhites isn't a real majority. And the solution is clear, too: to write those people out of the polity, to use every available tool to weaken their influence on American politics-whether that means raising barriers to voting and registration or slashing access to the ballot box itself or anything in between."

"I think nationally, we have the Republican Party, which sort of doesn’t really believe it can win without changing the rules and, like, kicking people out the electorate. And then in cities like New York and the state of California, you have a party that does not think it can lose. And so that creates its own set of dysfunctions."

"And Trumpism, as the iconography of his movement demonstrates, has race at its core. Trump began his march to the White House as the chief proponent of the "birther" conspiracy, arguing relentlessly that the country's first Black president was foreign-born and therefore illegitimate. His appeal as a presidential candidate was to white Americans who believed that their racial identity and the country's national identity were one and the same."

"State control of the kind we've seen during the lockdowns has historically been associated with nonwhites and the extent to which some white Americans are viciously apposed to it may reflect the extent to which the social meaning of whiteness is freedom from that control...as well as the right to impose it on racial others. The lockdown is thus an assault on "liberty" *and* the inability to force (disproportionately black and brown) others to labor is *also* an assault on liberty"

"The story of emancipation, going really back to the founding of the country all the way to the civil war is very much the story of enslaved Africans and freed blacks taking the initiative to put their freedom on the agenda of national politics. That's especially true during the Civil War. The war, as many people know, it does not begin as a war for abolition. It begins as a war for union. But as soon as the shooting starts, enslaved people are escaping to union lines. They're leaving work on plantations. They're offering their assistance to- to union soldiers as guides, as laborers and eventually as soldiers. And it's those actions that transform the war for union into a war for liberation, into a war for emancipation. And although Juneteenth commemorates those enslaved Africans who were whisked away to Texas to avoid the Emancipation Proclamation, I think it's still an opportunity for us to really think and take seriously the fact that emancipation does not happen without the actions of the enslaved, not just over the war, but really over the course of 80 years."

"why this moment? Why Juneteenth has sort of erupted in this way over the past couple weeks, why people find it so resonant right now is that Juneteenth is very much a holiday about the distance between freedom that is promised and freedom that is lived. And right now, millions of Americans are seeing with regards to police brutality, with regard to inequality, the distance that still exists between freedom and liberty, as we imagine it, as we have proclaimed it, and that has actually experienced by ordinary people."

"I think that's progress. I think that represents Americans coming to recognize what those statues were erected for. They weren't erected as memorials for the war. They were very much erected as symbols of Jim Crow, as symbols of white supremacy. I think it's the public beginning to come to the recognition that public space is ours to shape. Right? That when we put up memorials or monuments, we are trying to present a particular memory of the past that we want to remember. And do we want to remember, honor a past where someone like Robert E. Lee was a central figure, a figure of esteem?"

"After Trump lost, with the majority of mail-in ballots going to his opponent, his campaign argued that illegal voting had been particularly rampant in a few cities within the states that had determined the election: Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. No one has ever accused Donald Trump of being subtle, but even for him, this was blatant. Atlanta is 51 percent Black; Detroit, 78 percent. Philadelphia is 42 percent Black, and Milwaukee has a Black population of just under 39 percent. So-called illegal votes were, in actuality, just Black votes."

"there is no national drive, no national politician saying the United States needs to construct much more housing than it does. And I think it has everything to do with how the party coalitions right now are what their nature is."

"The difference for ordinary black Americans, as opposed to NFL stars, is that this has been a powerful driver of downward mobility. Just a quick comparison of black and white neighborhoods is enough to illustrate the particular challenges that face black families as they reach for middle class, or try to keep their position. The key fact is this: Even after you adjust for income and education, black Americans are more likely than any other group to live in neighborhoods with substantial pockets of poverty."

"one consequence of the fact that our popular historical understanding erases roughly 1870 to 1932 from public memory is that many Americans have a distinctly warped view of how resilient american democracy actually is"

"ah, the halycon free speech days of 1954, when two-thirds of american blacks - about 10 million people - lived in a brutal and lawless apartheid state"

"[B]lack Americans live with a level of poverty that is simply unknown to the vast majority of whites. It’s tempting to attribute this to the income disparity between blacks and whites. Since blacks are more likely to be poor, it stands to reason that they’re more likely to live in poor neighborhoods. But the fact of large-scale neighborhood poverty holds true for higher-income black Americans as well. Middle-class blacks are far more likely than middle-class whites to live in areas with significant amounts of poverty. Among today’s cohort of middle- and upper-class blacks, about half were raised in neighborhoods of at least 20 percent poverty. Only 1 percent of today’s middle- and upper-class whites can say the same. In short, if you took two children—one white, one black—and gave them parents with similar jobs, similar educations, and similar values, the black child would be much more likely to grow up in a neighborhood with higher poverty, worse schools, and more violence. This is an outright disaster for income mobility. Given their circumstances, blacks face a reversal of their gains over the last generation. Simply put, the persistence of poor neighborhoods is a fact of life for the large majority of blacks; it’s been transmitted from one generation to the next, and shows little sign of changing."

"It's been about two years. More energy, my face clears up, weight falls off. I lost, like, 30 pounds! … Initially, I watched the documentary ‘What the Health’, and to put it frankly, it p***ed me off. It really did. I was like, let me get this straight: The person giving you the disease and the person fighting the disease are in bed together? To hell with y'all. Out of spite, I went vegan because I was like, Y'all don't care."

"I've actually met her before and she was sweet to me, I've only heard nice things about her, and she's awesome."

"Zendaya has certainly faced harsh judgement for her envelope-pushing hairstyles. Remember her Grammy Awards mullet? Or her faux locs from last year's Oscars? But that hasn't stopped the young star from doing whatever she feels."

"Zendaya is exceptional at every turn. She adds heartbreaking levity to moments when her spiraling teenager feels invincible instead of fragile, and the way she carries herself, narrates each story, and generally handles the weight of leading a series are all as endearing as they are commanding."

"Too much in my system Money MIA Mama making ends meet Working like a slave Daddy ain't at home, no Gotta be a man Do it for my homegrowns Do it for the fam Ay Just for your love, yeah, I'll Give you the world Mona Lisa's smile Hey Hell, I'll do twenty-five to life If it makes me your king A star in your eyes"

"Zendaya is more high-fashion. The hair to me on her is making her a little more boho. Like I feel like she smells like patchouli oil. Or weed."

"I know this feels like a really weird time to be celebrating. But I just want to say there is hope in the young people out there - I know that our TV show doesn't always feel like a great example of that - but there is hope in our young people and I just want to say to all my peers out there doing the work in the streets, 'I see you, I admire you, I thank you."

"Swag it out I'm gonna, I'm gonna g-g-g-gonna swag it out I'm gonna I, I'm gonna g-g-g-gonna swag it out I'm gonna I, I'm gonna g-g-g-gonna swag it out I'm gonna I, I'm gonna g-g-g-gonna swag it out I'm gonna I, I'm gonna g-g-g-gonna swag it out"

"Light up the floor! Play me one more Let me hear that Click clack on the high high let the base vibrate Feel the room rock Light up the floor! Just like before Let me hear that Base-drop from the boombox, make your heart stop! Feel the room rock"

"I do want to dress up. I still want to have the experience. It’ll be probably just my family over here, but I definitely want to pull a look and maybe just walk my living room carpet."

"There is already harsh criticism of African American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair. My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough. To me locs are a symbol of beauty and strength, almost like a lion’s mane."

"I always hide my face when I cry. I would cover up my whole performance with my hands if I let myself. Rue has such a darkness to her, but also an innocence. I have to be super vulnerable and sad in front of people. It’s weird, but cathartic in a lot of ways."

"A dream like this not something you wish for A dream like this not something you ask for When it's a gift worth taking a chance for Then this is something you dance for"

"I was a huge fan of That's So Raven as a kid. I don’t know—maybe I was destined to be on Disney Channel. But I did love me some Disney Channel!"

"I think it’s a responsibility, but like Tupac Shakur, I’m a real model. Which means: I’m not pretending to be something that I’m not, because like he said, people are going to be disappointed when they find out who you are, because it’s not going to be what you presented to the world. So just keep it real. I’m a good kid and that’s all."

"Covergirl celebrates powerful, beautiful, and strong women of different races and ethnicities. It’s inspiring. I’m thrilled to be part of the diversity and expansion of beauty."

"Some would say the mullet didn't work out. But to me, they were talking about it, so I'd say it worked out. I think we can't allow ourselves to get caught up in other people's opinions of ourselves because then we're never going to progress, we're never going to go forward. So we've got to be real. We've got to do what we want to do even if people don't like it. The greatest of the greats wouldn't be the greatest of the greats if they didn't try stuff, you know what I mean? So, no, I don't regret anything. I'm very happy with all of the choices we have made."

"You can go about it as cultural appreciation or cultural appropriation. You have to be very careful. Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them."

"We make memories every day and everywhere we go, it's just shenanigans. Something always happens. I think the secret to a really great friendship is just creating fun memories whenever you're with that person. Bella is a surprise every day. That's the best part of our friendship. She's very bubbly and bright, and I'm more mellow, so we are kind of like our characters in a sense. We fit together so well because whatever I lack she has and whatever she lacks I have."

"My main reason for being a vegetarian is that I’m an animal lover — definitely NOT because I love vegetables. I thought it was awful, all those animals getting packed up in there waiting to be killed. I couldn’t believe that’s how I’d been getting my meat! I had this crazy dream about raining hamburgers. You know that book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? It was like that, with giant food falling out of the sky. And I still remember the dream so clearly."

"Yeah Wanna put this song on replay I can listen to it all day I can listen to you all day Hear you all day Yeah Wanna put this song on replay We can start all over again And again Yeah Wanna put this song on re"

"The reason why I chose not to do the Aaliyah movie had nothing to do with the haters or people telling me that I couldn't do it, I wasn't talented enough, or I wasn't black enough. It had absolutely nothing to do with that. The main reasons were that the production value wasn't there, there were complications with the music rights, and I just felt like it wasn't being handled delicately considering the situation."

"We’re in a time when film is so loud and the audience is looking for shocking. It’s hard to convince people that there is an audience out there that wants quiet stories."

"I didn’t think that I was powerless…But I didn’t think that I was powerful."

"It was a gift to have something else that I was passionate about, because at the end of the day, it comes down to the work and the art."