Black America has always felt itself divided into two classes: the mucky-mucks and the folk.
All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.
Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation.
When President Kennedy was elected, many black Americans, like so many Americans, were captivated by his youth and energy and promise and were especially hopeful that he might move the country in a new direction on civil rights.
But I know that the vote of 9 out of 10 black Americans for the Democratic Party or for leftist kinds of policies just is not reflective of their opinions.
I think race has been a burden for black Americans. Being Muslim has also been a challenge because so many people do not understand Islam.
I think black Americans expect too much from individual black Americans in terms of changing the status quo.
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.
My kids are the reason I continue to strive for something better. They know - as kids who are Muslim, Somali, black Americans - that they've always been part of a struggle and that change isn't easy.
Big and oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom, something black Americans know all too well.
Faith in God helped black Americans endure slavery and Jim Crow.
News flash to black Americans: Barack Obama has never loved you, and by now, it should be clear to you!
In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.
Law enforcement's biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the 'paddy wagon.' The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans.
As America prepared for war in 1941, discrimination largely shut black Americans out of job opportunities in the growing defense industry.
It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees. Official census records, used by so many genealogy enthusiasts to piece together their families' pasts, don't include our non-European ancestors.
The closest Indian analogy to the position of black Americans is that of the Dalits - formerly called 'Untouchables,' the outcastes who for millennia suffered humiliating discrimination and oppression.
Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.
In fact, the religious right consists of an alliance of several groups that, without experiencing anything like the oppression visited on black Americans, have consistently occupied lower rungs in the American social hierarchy.
