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The Catholic Church Had Strict Racial Attitudes And Intolerance For Anybody Who Was Not Catholic. When I Look At A Lot Of Black Ministers And What Went On In The Black Church, I Was More Caught Up With Those Who Were In Cadillacs And Shiny Suits Than I Was With Those Who Were Kingian In Their Style.

-Harry Belafonte

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The Catholic Church Had

Harry Belafonte

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The Catholic Church Had Strict Racial Attitudes And Intolerance For Anybody Who Was Not Catholic. When I Look At A Lot Of Black Ministers And What Went On In The Black Church, I Was More Caught Up With Those Who Were In Cadillacs And Shiny Suits Than I Was With Those Who Were Kingian In Their Style.

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The Catholic Church Had Strict Racial Attitudes And Intolerance For Anybody Who Was Not Catholic. When I Look At A Lot Of Black Ministers And What Went On In The Black Church, I Was More Caught Up With Those Who Were In Cadillacs And Shiny Suits Than I Was With Those Who Were Kingian In Their Style.

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I Think That They [bush Administration] Are Men Who Are Possessed Of Evil.

I Not Only Think That They (u.s. Leaders) Are Misguided, But I Think They Know Exactly What They Are Doing And I Think That They Are Men Who Are Possessed Of Evil.

I Don't Know What America Has Really Learned. We Are Too Quick To Do What's Expedient On Behalf Of Our Culture Of Greed And Hedonism. We're Quite Prepared To Go To Conditions Of Tyranny In Order To Sustain That Culture, And We Do It In The Name Of Democracy, When Nothing Could Be More Undemocratic. We Do It In The Name Of Saving The Values Of Our Society, When The Way We Behave Corrupts Those Values. We Do It In The Name Of God In Whom We Believe, When In Fact We Have Corrupted Our Own Vision Of The Christian Journey.

Although We Had A Lot Of Villainy Here In America, Adolf Hitler Was Certainly The Most Visible Illustration Of What Would Happen If Fascism Went Unchallenged.

When I Was Born, I Was Colored. I Soon Became A Negro. Not Long After That I Was Black. Most Recently I Was African-american. It Seems We're On A Roll Here. But I Am Still First And Foremost In Search Of Freedom.

African American

I Became An Anti-fascist, And The More I Saw What Was Happening To The Peoples Of Europe, The Jews, The More I Saw The Deep Cruelty And Inhumanity Of That System And Its Philosophy Of White Supremacy.

I Delighted In The Music Of Africa, The Earliest Of The Slave Plantation Songs, The Transformation Into Christianity And All That Christianity Brought To The Lives Of The Africans Who Were Forced To Come To America.

We've Come To This Dark Time In Which The New Gestapo Of Homeland Security Lurks Here, Where Citizens Are Having Their Rights Suspended.

I Am A Man Who Perceives Life In A Certain Way, A Man Who Rejects Things That Defecate On Humankind, Who Rejects Anything That Will Not Give People Room For Dissent.

When I Went To Japan I Sang In Japanese; When I Went To Greece I Sang In Greek. When I Went To Spain, I Sang In Spanish. I Couldn't Speak It Very Well, But I Sang, I Was Beautiful In Singing It. These Things Just Constantly Attracted People To The Uniqueness Of Who I Was And The Way In Which I Performed.

I Am Who I Am Despite What America Has Put Before Me. I Am Who I Am Despite The Obstacles That We Have All Faced Based Upon Race And Based Upon Social And Spiritual Humiliation.

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This Generosity That Has Been Offered To The United States Says Very Much About The Venezuelan Spirit.

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I Didn't Like The Wiz And It Wasn't Because Black People Were Doing It. I Didn't Like The Wiz Because It Was A Badly Made Movie Off A Classic. Why Are You Remaking Something Unless You Have Something Better In Mind?

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Terrorism Is In Many, Many Ways The Final Utterance Of Voices Unheard.

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I Think Being Born In America And Growing Up Exclusively Within The American Boundaries Of Race And Race Oppression Is A Very Different Experience For Those Of Us Who Grew Up Under The Boundaries Of Race And Race Experience In The Caribbean Or For Those Who Grew Up In Africa.

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Each Time We Arrive At A New Level In Extricating Ourselves From Economic, Social, Spiritual Domination, We Have A Moment When We Dance In The World Of These New Experiences, Only To Find That The Music Soon Stops, The Dance Ends, And We're Struggling Once Again To Save Ourselves From Being Thrown Back Into Those Conditions.

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Turning Against The Church I Also Had To Turn Against A Lot Of The Teachings Of People In My Family Who Were Very Much Of The Church And Caught In It, And Every Time I Turned To Find Where Resides The Good In The Church, All I Saw Was The Demonic, The Lucifer Of The Journey.

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Where Is The Raised Voice Of Black America? Why Are We Mute?

I Realized That Most White Americans Knew Very Little About Our History And Our Struggle, And Were Having Difficulty Understanding The Basis For Our Agitation And Our Resistance And Our Complaints. I Also Discovered That While Black Americans Had A Sense Of The Beauty And Tragedy Of The Journey From The Time Of Slavery Until Now, We Were Not Rooted In The Specifics. I Thought One Way To Familiarize People With That History Would Be Through The Voices Of The Great Folk Artists.

I Grew Up In A School System . . . Where Nobody Understood The Meaning Of Learning Disorder. In The West Indies, I Was Constantly Being Physically Abused Because The Whipping Of Students Was Permitted.

I Think America Offers A Dream That Cannot Be Fulfilled As Easily Anywhere Else In The World As It Could Be Fulfilled Here. Although Oppression Was Common To All Of Us, Those Styles Of Oppression Gave Us The Opportunity To See The World In Dimensions We Didn't Quite See Growing Up In Any One Place.

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Why Are We Mute? Where Are Our Leaders, Our Legislators? Where Is The Church?

We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees

Through Electing Officials That Will Protect The Constitution And Commit Themselves To The Rights Of The People And The Health Of The Nation, We Will Be Able To Ensure That No Group Of Ideologues And No Private Sector Institution Can Coopt Our Rights, Take Us Into Senseless Wars And Steal The Nation From Its People.

America Can No Longer Afford To Be As Arrogant As We've Been. We Can No Longer Exempt Ourselves From The Global Family Of Concern.

The Usa Has More People In Prison That Any Other Country, Including Countries With Much Larger Populations. 13% Of The Population Is Black But 80% Of The People In Prison Are Black, Mostly For Soft Crimes.

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Do Not Submit. It Is Extremely Critical That Repression Be Met Full Head-on And That It Be Resisted With Every Fiber In Our Being. There Is Just Absolutely No Compromise That Can Be Made With It.

Pop Culture Has None Of The Vibrancy That You Find In The Folk Culture, Where People Speak Directly To Their Own Experience In The Human Condition.

Bin Laden Didn't Come From The Abstract. He Came From Somewhere, And If You Look Where ... You'll See America's Hand Of Villainy.

I Like Colin Powell, I Like His West Indian Background, I Like His Intellect, I Like A Lot Of Things That He Does And His Style. What Is At Fault Here Is A Policy That's Taking This Country To Hell.

I Would Hope With All My Heart, That Jay Z Not Take Personally What Was Said... I Would Like To Take This Opportunity To Say To Jay Z And Beyonce: I’m Wide Open, My Heart Is Filled With Nothing But Hope And The Promise That We Can Sit And Have A One-on-one To Understand Each Other.

As A Matter Of Fact, Compromise Is What Oppression Feeds On.

Our Foreign Policy Has Made A Wreck Of This Planet. I'm Always In Africa... And When I Go To These Places I See American Policy Written On The Walls Of Oppression Everywhere.

In My Earliest Of Years, My Mother Was A Huge Force In My Life. She Was For All Intents And Purposes, A Single Parent. My Father Had Abandoned Us. He Was An Alcoholic And A Physical Abuser. My Mother Lived Through That Tyranny And Made Her Living As A Domestic Worker. She Was Uneducated But She Brought High Principles And Decent Values Into Our Existence, And She Set Lofty Goals For Herself And For Her Children. We Were Forever Inspired By Her Strength And By Her Resistance To Racism And To Fascism.

There's An Old Saying In The Days Of Slavery, There Are Those Slaves Who Lived On The Plantation, And There Were Those Slaves Who Lived In The House. You Got The Privilege Of Living In The House If You Served The Master To Exactly The Way The Master Intended To Have You Serve Him. That Gave You Privilege. Colin Powell Is Permitted To Come Into The House Of The Master, As Long As He Will Serve The Master According To The Master's Dictates. Now, When Colin Powell Dares To Suggest Something Other Than What The Master Wants To Hear, He Will Be Turned Back Out To Pasture.

I Come From A Sense Of Struggle, A Sense Of Using The Instruments That Were Given To Me To Manipulate The Environment In Which I Found Myself, And Joined Up With Those Who Are Equally As Skillful At Manipulating That Environment, As Was I.

When I Go Across The Country, Whether It's Albuquerque, New Mexico, Whether It's Birmingham, Alabama Or Milwaukee, Wisconsin, There Are Always Forces At Play That I Choose To Relate To And Extract Inspiration From, And As Long As They Stay Committed To The Struggle Against Poverty, I Find A Role For Myself.

The Only Thing Left For Barack Obama To Do Is To Work Like A Third World Dictator And Just Put All These Guys In Jail.

Art In Its Highest Form Is Art That Serves And Instructs Society And Human Development.

The Human Spirit Is Resilient And Truth - No Matter How Long You Abuse It And How Long You Try To Crush It - Will, As Dr. King Would Say, Rise Up Again, And In The Final Analysis Will Prevail.

Wherever I Found Resistance To Oppression, Whether In Africa, In Latin America, Certainly Here In America In The South, I Joined That Resistance. I Took Part In The Labor Movement, In Social Movements, In The Church Community. I Felt That It Was The Honorable Thing To Do And Still Do.

I've Always Been Supportive Of The Right Of Israel As A State, And I've Always Fought Against Anti-semitism, Even In My Own Community.

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