African Quotations

The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York, combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned, really turned me on to The Best Man.

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

I just had a normal African childhood; we played football a lot, but it was always in the street and always without shoes. Boots were very expensive, and when there are seven in your family, and you say you want to buy a pair, your father wants to kill you.

In Nigeria, along with its West African neighbor Ghana, women are now starting businesses in greater numbers than men.

When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.

Obamanomics, his imposition of European-style socialism, is not working for African-Americans. It is not working for Latinos and African-Americans.

Hollywood needs to recognise all shades of African American beauty.

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

I know exactly what I will do. I will go and work with the Congress of South African Students.

It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans.

I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a system of laws that made it illegal for people to mix in South Africa. And this was obviously awkward because I grew up in a mixed family. My mother's a black woman, South African Xhosa woman... and my father's Swiss, from Switzerland.

Indians were here first - it's about time. We're way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we're beginning to take a page out of their notebook.

I grew up in the African bush in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, which is my thing. I love the smell of the dust as you bump along in a Land-Rover. I go back there often.

It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.

Not only do African students deserve excellent universities, they deserve good elementary and secondary schools, too - and then, to have access to ongoing vocational and job training to ensure their skills remain as relevant as possible to African organizations.

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

None of us is responsible for the complexion of his skin. This fact of nature offers no clue to the character or quality of the person underneath.

I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.

If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

Coming up in the Bay Area and being African American in a city that has a history of complex issues of violent crime, interaction with the police is always intense. That's something you have to learn. My mom taught me at a young age that if ever a cop stops you, you put your hands up and freeze - don't move.

It's heavy, but I am able to carry it. Why? Because I'm an African woman. An African woman carries heavy loads anyway. That's how we are trained; we are brought up that nothing is unbearable. I use that now, positively. I use that now to have the thick skin that I have, and not fear, and move forward, and push; and push forward.

For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware.

I'm just trying to touch the world and touch the people and just get good material. And show them that we can get it done. Just because you're African American, you still can touch the masses. And that's my goal. I won't stop until that goal is continued to push it hard to the world that we are the universal person as well.

Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate.

I have an African gray parrot; her name is Eli. We thought she was a boy. And a blue-streaked lory named Marco. He's 10. And a yellow and green parakeet, Petey. He's very cute, but he's getting old.

Republicans have called for a National African-American Museum. The plan is being held up by finding a location that isn't in their neighborhood.

Creating a body of mathematics is about intellectual labor, not some kind of transcendental revelation. There are plenty of important components of European fractal geometry that are missing from the African version.

People identify with me - everyone does - African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I'm ethnic.

Don't say you want to be an actor and not know how to read a script. Don't give up 15 minutes before the miracle comes. Everyone's career ebbs and flows, especially if you're African American. That's the time to dig in and keep your instrument sharp.

The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius, an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics, called Cheetah blades, Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world.

When I was growing up, Brandy was TV star, reality star, a pop star, a Cover girl, Grammy winner, had her own Brandy doll, and was the first African American to play Disney princess Cinderella. Most importantly, she is a survivor. Many only judge and remember a person's most recent failure.

My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he's also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is

African Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

I have never been more proud of the United States than I am this year. We have elected an African-American president. We have the stellar Michelle Obama setting the standard for American women. I simply cannot say it enough: look how far we've come.

You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

However, research in the years that followed found that in many of its important features, African American Vernacular English was becoming not less, but more different from other dialects.

I've got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

Black English is simpler than standard English in some ways; for example, it often gets by with just 'be' and drops 'am,' 'is,' and 'are.' That's because black English arose when adult African slaves learned the language.

I have been privileged to have the opportunity to work with many of African American fraternal and social organizations that are active in my congressional district. They all do important work that makes a tangible difference to the quality of life in our community.

We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls.

There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.

After Nigeria, we are the second biggest black African nation. We are the headquarters of the African Union. We are the only African country that has never been colonized. This is perhaps the last surviving African civilization.

I grew up in the '50s, a tough time for African Americans. I had friends whose fathers would openly say, 'Just bite your tongu;, don't cause any problems.' My father was not like that. Even in the toughest times racially, if somebody disrespected his family, they were in trouble.

Africa is not fulfilling people's hopes and aspirations. African leaders have not had an agenda that included governing Africa so that people would find their careers, their life, dreams and visions fulfilled here.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row

The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.

There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

The emergence of a hardware product from an African company marks a phase-change point for tech invention. The BRCK shows that great ideas can come from anywhere, that innovation comes from solving real problems with constrained resources.

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

'The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears' is very much about America - it just happens to have African and Ethiopian characters, and in fact, it happens to have more characters who are not Ethiopian than who are.

Housing programs designed to help young families and senior citizens purchase homes should be available to people of all races, including African Americans.

When we play at the World Cup, any African will back any African team. Because we want to hear the different approach to African football. We want to hear that Africans can do well, and Africans do well.

We African Americans have now spent the major part of the 20th Century battling racism

I think that there are some people on the so-called Left who might say we have to circle our wagons around the first African American president, and to me that is racism in reverse because his policies are actually still the racist policies of empire.

Nike is the uniform for kids all over the world, and African design has been killed by Nike. Africans no longer want to wear their own designs.

The United States has been fighting African pirates since the early days of the republic - battles so formative that, among other things, they established a long-standing pattern of dealing with foreign policy problems through armed interventions and also inspired the iconic phrase 'the shores of Tripoli' in the Marine Corps hymn.

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.

The very first role I ever played was as a 17-year old South African girl who dreamed of being a star and left home to meet her mother in the big city so that she could pursue that dream. I left South Africa and met my mother in Vancouver and not long after that was given the opportunity to perform on the stage and have people chant my name.

African-American women account for 67 percent of all newly diagnosed female AIDS cases.

Southern states in the confederacy were not ready to give up their fight to secede or give up their way of life, which was made possible in large part through the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves.

No country in Europe has a larger proportion of men and women of immigrant descent, mainly from the African continent and mainly Muslim: an estimated six to seven million of them, or more than 10% of the population.

Mostly I'm proud to be an African-American woman, but I'm glad I have a universal look as well.

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

I'd like to see marriage count again among African-Americans and not just in the society in general.

Diabetes occurs at twice the rate in the African American community as it does in white Americans.

In the African American community, we are very 'hush, hush' about things in our life.

My identity is not based on performance; it's based on something that's pre-determined by someone else, and I don't even understand what that is because I'm an African who came to America.

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me.

I am very proud to be African. I want to defend African people, and I want to show to the world that African players can be as good as the Europeans and South Americans.

During the 2008 campaign, I strongly endorsed Barack Obama for president. I did so early, when many Democratic leaders - including many prominent African-American politicians - believed the safe bet was to back then-front-runner Hillary Clinton.

You say 'African music' and you think 'tribal drumming.' But there's a lot of African music that's like James Brown, and a lot, too, that sounds very Hispanic.

I was well known to African Americans before Bill Clinton discovered me. He was like Christopher Columbus riding up on something he didn't understand.

We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.

When I became a director, I wanted to convince a very reluctant Sidney into allowing me to go on the journey of his life. Sidney had gone ahead of every other African American actor.

It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.

I interviewed dozens and dozens of African women who had endured more hardship and trauma than most Westerners even read about, and they ploughed on. I often openly cried during interviews, unable to process this violence and hatred towards women I was witnessing.

African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us.

My mother was a member of the Cape Coloured community. 'Coloured' is the South African word for the half-caste community that was a by-product of the early contact between black and white.

We talk about freedoms for African-Americans but unless you have more than one option politically, how free are you?

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.

As African-Americans, we often spend our time and energy blaming other people for the problems we see around us.

I'm very interested in heritage restoration, and I'm working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history.

What I find problematic is the suggestion that when, say, Madonna adopts an African child, she is saving Africa. It's not that simple. You have to do more than go there and adopt a child or show us pictures of children with flies in their eyes. That simplifies Africa.

I first heard African drum rhythms and chants at the movies. Then, when I had the opportunity to go to Africa and visit the villages, I heard the real, raw, true rhythms and realised the origins of the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South.

The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church.

During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.

When you talk about evangelicals, don't forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans - well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical - will probably vote Democratic.

Now in the 1980s, I happened to notice that if you look at an aerial photograph of an African village, you see fractals. And I thought, 'This is fabulous! I wonder why?' And of course I had to go to Africa and ask folks why.

As we women know, there are so many other hurdles that we have to cross that I would love it if we could stop having the race conversation so that we can get women further on. You know, a female president now that we have an African American president. Maybe we can get an Asian female, a gay person?

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

Hungry people cannot be good at learning or producing anything, except perhaps violence.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have played an important role in enriching the lives of not just African Americans, but our entire country.

What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa.

I only became an actor to get your attention, to challenge the archetype of an African American male; I can't be anything else in this lifetime than an African American man.