A Quote by Dave Matthews
Being a white South African, I enjoyed the better things that that country gave to a small percentage of its population.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Too 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.
There's a small percentage of people who can act. There's a small percentage who get to do this for a living. There's a swath of the population that are able to keep a story in their head and fight all the battles against self-consciousness and the surreal unnaturalness of acting in a movie. The technical aspects you can learn fairly quickly.
I didn't mind being in a school with a small African-American population. The African-American-community was very tight, and that was great. But I also wanted to interact with other types of folks.
No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid
There is a tendency just to talk about foreign investors. Over 80 per cent of new investment in the South African economy is South African and therefore the engagement of the South African investor is also a critical part of this process.
We do not have a South African as a member of the African Commission. The President of the Commission comes from Mali, the Deputy comes from Rwanda and then we have got all these other members, ordinary commissioners. There is no South African there. And the reason, again, for that is not because we didn't have South Africans who are competent.
Take, for example, Lithuania. Do you know, what was its population in the Soviet times? It was 3.4 mln people. It was a small country, a small republic. And what is it now? I have looked though the recent statistics, today the population of this country is 1.4 mln people. Where are the people? More than half of the citizens have left the country.
I think all of my writing life led up to the writing of 'The Train Driver' because it deals with my own inherited blindness and guilt and all of what being a white South African in South Africa during those apartheid years meant.
I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.
The US is a country [in which] eighty percent of the population thinks the Bible was written by god. About half think every word is literally true. So it's had to appeal to that - and to the nativist population, the people that are frightened, have always been... It's a very frightened country and that's increasing now with the recognition that the white population is going to be a minority pretty soon, "they've taken our country from us."
My maternal family are South African and when I was small and my parents separated my mother and I went back to South Africa. So for me the emergence of my own childhood consciousness was in the context of 1970s and 1980s apartheid South Africa and the movement there.
One of the things that made the Black Muslim movement grow was its emphasis upon things African. This was the secret to the growth of the Black Muslim movement. African blood, African origin, African culture, African ties. And you'd be surprised - we discovered that deep within the subconscious of the black man in this country, he is still more African than he is American.
Such a small percentage of our population carry the burden of knowing what's really going on in our country's name, and I think that unless that's out in the open and people are discussing it, then our healthy democracy is not so healthy.
[Winning the White House was an achievement], but as an African-American, [Barack Obama], I think the symbolism is in how he conducted himself. The symbolism was in - and this sounds really, really small, but it's actually big for African-Americans - the symbolism was not in being an embarrassment, but to being a figure that folks were actually proud of.
By 2030, just a small percentage of the global population will live in poverty.
My brother and I were brought up sort of thinking that we were English. I remember hearing the poet Roy Campbell on the radio and being quite shocked that he had a South African accent. I didn't know there were any South African poets.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician