Quotes About African

Well, Smoke n' Mirrors has very much a world music flavor and it doesn't park itself in one country. It borrows heavily from the Brazilian angle, which is dear to my heart, and I recorded several albums with that flavor. Probably even more so than the Brazilian flavor, there's an African, South African and West African influence and on a couple of other tracks there's some Latin flavor and there's some Indian tables on one track, all centered around my jazz guitar and acoustic guitars, and very much a Lee Ritenour sound.

What moved us was not so much what would it do for South Africa, but there has been a great keenness on the Continent that the location of the Pan African Parliament must add to its credibility. And, so we said, fine, it's a contribution to this process of the democratisation of the African Continent.

I believe in supporting African solutions to African problems.

You're not an African because you're born in Africa. You're an African because Africa is born in you. It's in your genes.... your DNA....your entire biological make up. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. However, if you were to embrace this truth with open arms....my, my, my....what a wonderful thing.

I wanted to show that an African-American artist could make it in this country on a national level in the graphic arts. I want to be a strong role model for my family and for other African Americans.

I don't do stuff to be a star. I do it because I feel it's important for kids, African American kids, to see an African American face that plays baseball.

There are more than 100 million African women who go topless at some point in the day, each and every day, to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a country like America where nothing is hated more than the image of the black woman, even by black people'because her womb produces the black man and makes us black'I find it of grave importance to implement African images, and especially to produce media images that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black women.

When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.

When you sit in America you miss the open plains and you miss the sound of rain and the smell of rain and the smell of the veld. If you're African it's different and I don't think one will ever become an American or British. It doesn't matter where you move, you will always be a South African.

The [Steve Harvey] foundation started originally about the educational needs of children. But, as I got into it more and more, one of my main objectives became mentoring programs for young African American men because that's our problem in our community - it's the African American men.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.

As we move forward, you cannot resolve the potential food crisis or shortages without science being part of the solution. Science has to be part of the solution but African governments - and these are decisions for governments, whether they embrace or do not embrace genetically modified food - and for the moment, most African companies do not accept genetically modified seeds.

As I said, the matter of the Pan African Parliament was raised with us by other African countries who said we should host.

I do think, however, that there's a very diverse point of view in the African-American community. There's a lot of different voices that need to be heard. I don't claim and pretend to know the thoughts and opinions and ideas of all African-Americans.

And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.

When I walk in the door sometimes, I'm already an anomaly. Because I'm working in a genre that African-American's don't typically engage in.

Making African American films are hard in Hollywood. We need to rely on a support network and bring more cohesion to different filmmakers, actors, producers etc. It's a very difficult business. There aren't a lot of Africans Americans or people of color in high positions in Hollywood that we can green-light films.

My grandmother's grandparents were slaves. My grandmother Big Mama would tell me about the stories she heard as a child growing up in the shadows of a North Carolina plantation. It's only been in my lifetime that blacks have had the right to vote, live in certain areas or hold certain jobs. It is with this black history that I write about the financial challenges African-Americans still have.

I serve on the Institute of the Black World's National Commission on African-American Reparations, and we have asked the President [Barack Obama] to, by executive order, establish a commission to study reparations. He can do this without Congressional approval. While I am not optimistic, I do hope that President Obama considers this in these waning months of his Presidency.

A very hurting thing for Black Americans - to feel that we can't love our enemies. People forget what a great tradition we have as African-Americans in the practice of forgiveness and compassion. And if we neglect that tradition, we suffer.

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.

People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American. They're not us. They're impostors.

Today, we have come a distance. We have made a lot of progress. That cannot be denied. You cannot dispute the fact that our country is so different from 50 years ago. But we still have problems. There are too many people that have been left out and left behind, and they are African American, they are White, Latino, Asian American, and Native American.

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

Food 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.

What I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There's a lot of tribalism in the collections.

While the WTO negotiations will continue, there are other trade negotiations of a bilateral nature, which among other things, should help to open up these markets for South African products.

Some heat, some spice and plenty of citrus are the building blocks of many north African fish dishes.

The international community has to overcome its differences and find solutions to the conflicts of today in South Sudan, Syria, Central African Republic and elsewhere. Non-traditional donors need to step up alongside traditional donors. As many people are forcibly displaced today as the entire populations of medium-to-large countries such as Colombia or Spain, South Africa or South Korea.

[People] have no jobs, they have horrible education, they have no safety or security, and I say to the African-American community, what the hell do you have to lose?

Unlike [Woodrow] Wilson, Louis Brandeis did not support the segregation of the federal government. He was personally courteous to African Americans. He advised them and advised the head of Howard University to create a good law school. And that inspired Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall in their path-breaking work on behalf of desegregation.

The music that I listen to the most is probably world music, whether it's from African or South America or all over.

We 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.

As the old African adage says, 'everybody skin to me ain't kin to me'. So you can't exclusively make that the criteria of your job selection and say that it's right when it's black and discrimination when it's white.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of guns going off, you know, guns held by white men acting as vigilantes, cops who feel more free to open fire against African Americans.

I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.

I want to do things that haven’t been done, including fixing and making our inner cities better for the African-American citizens that are so great, and for the Latinos, Hispanics, and I look forward to doing it. It’s called make America great again.

An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

Once 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.

I didn't want to try and borrow kudos from Indonesian culture. I was trying to get a fresh perspective on these instruments. I'm not doing a Paul Simon Gracelands and stealing all this African music and not give anyone any credit.

Racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism. Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth and curly hair. And I'm so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it is African.

It's the first thing liberals notice about people is what group are you in! "What group do I put you in? Are you a woman? Are you lesbian? Are you straight? Are you Native American? Are you African-American? Are you a mix? What are you?" That's how they see people, because that then identifies the victim status they hold. Victims of what? Victims of America! All these people are victims of America, "the white, patriarchal majority." They're all victims of America, as the left sees them.

The Children's Hospital will be a credible demonstration of the commitment of African leaders to place the rights of children at the forefront. Nothing less would be enough.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

Take that bone out of your nose and call me back (to an African American female caller).

African people worldwide are known to be welcoming and open-minded.

We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria.