Popular quotes about African! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
African Americans, in particular, saw their cumulative wealth crash. They used to have 10 cents on the dollar of the average white family. That 10 cents on the dollar that the African American family used to have crashed down to 5 cents on the dollar, given the focus of predatory lending on the African American community and the degree to which they were really devastated by the foreclosure crisis. So yeah, I think there is a lot of disappointment out there.
Jill SteinOne of the ongoing crises in America is institutional racism. We have a very broken criminal justice system. We live in a country where there are more people in jail than any other country on Earth. There are some 2.2 million people currently incarcerated and they are disproportionally African American and Hispanic. Unarmed African Americans have been abused and sometimes killed while in police custody. Clearly these are issues that must be dealt with and changed.
Bernie SandersThe other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise.
Marina WarnerThe writer in me can look as far as an African-American woman and stop. Often that writer looks through the African-American woman. Race is a layer of being, but not a culmination.
Thylias MossIn fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died.
Bobby ScottSo in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.
Zora Neale HurstonCertainly we must combine forces . South African troops are within the country.We raised this matter with Mrs [Margaret] Thatcher and Lord [Peter] Carrington when we met them and we wanted to get from them a definite commitment that they were going to get the South African troops out.
Robert MugabeToo often the media assumes that "poverty" is an African American or a Latino issue. Of course, that's nonsense. While a higher percentage of the African American and Latino population does live in poverty as compared to the white population, when overall numbers are looked at, it is clear that people of all races, ethnicities, and colors, are represented amongst America's poor.
Sasha AbramskyIn community after community, there are unemployment rates among young African-Americans of 30 to 40 percent. Thirty to 40 percent! Kids have no jobs, they have no future. That is an issue that has got to be dealt with simultaneously as we deal with police brutality, voter suppression and the other attacks that are taking place on the African-American community.
Bernie SandersI am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by thatWe always try to find similarities in life, no matter what it is so they're going to try to put you in a box with other African-American quarterbacks - Vick, Newton, Randall Cunningham, Warren MoonThat's the goal. Just to go out and not try to prove anybody wrong but just let your talents speak for themselves.
Robert Griffin IIIIt's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.
Hugh MasekelaThe birth of the African Union should encourage us to reexamine relations between African States.
Omar BongoRegarding African education in this country, there was a time when the government took no interest whatsoever in African education. It was the churches, that part of civil society, which bought land, built schools, and employed and paid teachers. People like myself, right from grade eight up to university, I was in missionary schools.
Nelson MandelaThe most important thing in my life is that trying to ameliorate, redeem, the image in particular of African American men, or Black men - I don't really even like that term, "African American," because we're Black people.
Harry LennixI mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.
Desmond TutuWe have awakened. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world!
Kwame NkrumahWhether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.
Richard LeakeyWe know that African American students tend to be relational learners. It's about the relationships between a teacher and student. Students respond well to teachers they know, believe in them, care about them, but also who teach in a matter that elicits a more active approach to learning, rather than just sitting and listening. The research on this is strong and has been available for a long time, but it is not widely practiced. That's a huge obstacle.
Pedro NogueraThe interesting thing about the African-American experience in this country is that we are sort of a mongrel of people. I mean we're all kind of mixed up.
Barack ObamaFinally, a prominent nation is taking on the homosexual agenda and rejecting it outright. A number of African nations have done the same, but third-world countries are not newsworthy to mainstream media. The irony is stunning that a Communist nation would understand that preserving the value of men and women marrying and producing children makes for demographic survival, while many American Christian leaders cower in the shadows, in fear of activist homosexuals and their leftist supporters. I say 'cheers' to the Russians on this one. That nation will probably outlive America.
Sylvia ThompsonThe bottom line is that Wanda Sykes has the longest continuously documented family tree of any African-American we have ever researched.
Henry Louis GatesFood historian Jessica B. Harris says African American cuisine is simply what black people ate. When I think about what my family ate, we ate what people think of as soul food on special occasions, on holidays, but our typical diet was leafy greens and nutrients and tubers - food that was as fresh as being harvested right before our meal. Whatever was in season, that's what we were eating. It was being harvested right from our backyard.
Bryant TerryI don't know Beyoncรฉ, but I have the impression that she's sincere, that she really is a feminist and wanted to put the word out there to make it a good word in a big way by putting it in big letters on the stage, and especially because she was quoting the African novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who said, "We should all be feminists." She's a very accomplished and important novelist.
Gloria Steinem[God brought African slaves to America] so that their descendants would know freedom.
Ezola B. FosterVisit to Africa reshaped my point-of-view of colonialism. It reshaped my point-of-view of my own sense of source, and my own place of birth. It made it more organic inside of me, because it placed me in a position where my job was to understand and to become more African.
Forest WhitakerWe must protect the civil rights of American citizens - African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and all Americans - by ensuring that their jobs, wages, and well-being come first.
Donald TrumpI often quote an African proverb that says: "The world is not ours, the earth is not ours, It's a treasure we hold in trust for future generations." And I often hope we will be worthy of that trust.
Kofi AnnanIf you want to get at African American poverty, the income gap, wealth gap, achievement gap, that the most important thing is to make sure that the society as a whole does right by people who are poor, are working class, are aspiring to a better life for their kids.
Barack ObamaOnce you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.
Nadine GordimerIt's just cheaper to be White in America than it is to be Black, because of educational advances, because of the police incidents, because of the poverty we grow up in as African-Americans. So, it's just cheaper in this country if you're born a Caucasian than being born a Black person.
Warren BallentineCurrently poaching threatens the very existence of the African Elephant, and my worry is that if we do not act NOW, we could be looking at a future in which this iconic species is wiped out.
Yaya ToureEvery African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.
Lee DanielsIn my recent travels into African countries and others, I was impressed by the importance of having a working unity among all peoples, black as well as white.
Malcolm XThink bigger than society lets you think. And find mentors. My life is filled with people who knew me when I was 19 and had a horrible South African accent and bleach-blond hair and who believed in me in a way that was brutal. They were just unbelievable and consistent and smart. Find mentors who, every time you're with them, you're being schooled. Just absolutely schooled.
Charlize TheronPuerto Ricans are Americans. We've been American citizens since 1917. We fought the same battles, made the same sacrifices. We've lost our land in the same way that Native Americans lost their land, and we've been the subject of discrimination and racism in the same way that African Americans have. We've suffered the full spectrum of oppression, and yet we've been off the map 4,000 miles away so we haven't even been able to argue our case.
Nelson Antonio DenisIt is quite easy to understand what China would need from the African continent with regards to its own economy, raw materials, oil and a market for manufactured goods. As I say it is not difficulty to understand and perfectly legitimate. There is nothing wrong with that.
Thabo MbekiThe Marines estimate that roughly a hundred or 200 women will be interested in going into these jobs - roughly 2 percent of those jobs. Still, this is historic. It's a biggest cultural change in the military maybe ever, probably bigger than integrating the force back in 1948 when African-Americans were no longer segregated in separate units.
Renee MontagneThe good and bad are all tangled up together. American popular music is loved around the world because of its African rhythm. But that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for slavery.
Pete SeegerHowever, 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.
William LabovWe can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.
Roger EbertMaybe if I go far enough back into my ancestry, I have African roots or something. I've got no idea
Mick TaylorIt's completely different, for instance, to report on poor farmers in Africa than it is to report on, say, poor African-Americans. The familiarity of my readers with the terrain, and their preconceptions, are quite different in those two cases, and their perspective, as I imagine it, has to be taken into account at every turn.
William FinneganIf you look for instance at the automobile industry, part of the reason that you have the expansion of that sector, is precisely because we have gone out to talk to the automobile companies to explain government policy with regard to that sector, to talk to them about the MIDP and things like that. And indeed, it has been a very important part of attracting those investors to put in money in the South African economy and build motorcars in South Africa.
Thabo MbekiThere are African leaders who have the dangerous habit of leading their people into an abyss. In Rwanda we've had presidents who killed. The one million people who died here were, to a certain extent, victims of their leader, President Juvรฉnal Habyarimana, who died in a plane crash before the genocide began. He contributed to all that. The man who took over from him was running around ordering people to kill. If this president came back and landed in my hands, I would have him arrested and tried. Unfortunately, he died a natural death.
Paul Kagame