Top 1200 African Culture Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.

My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'

In African-American culture, there's often a family historian, someone who does the genealogy or keeps the family Bible. I became aware that might be one role the poet has.

I changed my name when we became aware of the African revolution and the whole question of our African roots.

What I love about African-African music is how unselfconscious it is in so many ways.

What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.

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.

I don't think there are any pure Africans of the African Americans, but the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the 60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness.

It's not Africa that is destroying the African rainforest, it's selling concessions to timber companies that are not African, they are from the developed world - Japan, America, Germany, Britain.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.

I went through a soul-searching period. I went to a place that was a little bit more reflective and dark. I began to look at who I am, who I was, where I come from, what my culture is, and who I am as an African-American person in America.

I write characters focusing on them as human beings, and then you wrap them within a culture. So I think I can connect with him as a person with brown skin who's viewed differently by the world. In terms of his culture, we're thinking about where we are locating Wakanda within the continent, and what the people and history of that region are like. It's a process of investigation to help inform the story at this point. But we are going to be engaged with consultants who are experts on the continent and on African history and politics.

We are different from many African countries. We represent Africa as the gateway and will do everything to make African and Israeli relations mushroom.

You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'

I joke that one of the rare times Egyptians identify as African is when the national soccer squad is playing in the African Cup of Nations - and preferably winning it.

The African people and tribal chiefs are hospitable, and African music and dances are invigorating.

In the long, nonillustrious history of white people pilfering African American culture, have I just perpetrated that? I'm motivated by a love for the music and by a love of the performances, and I really hope I haven't done anything bad.

Man is a culture, nothing but a culture! Question your culture! Just like monkeys picking lice from their skin, get rid of the stupidities in your culture!

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 should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize.

I even pretended years ago to be an African, a half-caste African, but because of my light eyes I did not get away with it, but I dyed my hair black.

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

When African-Americans come to France, the French show them more consideration than they would show an African or a Black Caribbean. When African-Americans come to France, the French people are like, 'Oh, wow. Oh my God.' But if it's an African, they're like, 'Whatever.' It's all because of the past, because of our history.

While America is generally a violent place, no culture in this country glorifies violence more than the African-American community. And consequently, no other racial group is as disproportionately affected by it.

The African-American community still needs to come together as one and stand up for rights of the people and of what's happening in their culture, their community.

Science fiction is the only genre that enables African writers to envision a future from our African perspective.

Popular culture - above all rock 'n' roll, with its African-American R & B roots - did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader.

The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans.

From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.

My roots are African. The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they're African.

The South African government, unlike a lot of African governments, isn't poor.

What I want to do is basically tell my generation's story about how music and culture helped affect a generation, and a generation that's so profound, that it went on to elect the first African-American president.

The Chinese, the African, and the European - they are all there. So the division of the Caribbean experience into being emphatically only African is absurd.

Many South African tribes used extracts from the African bush willow to heal the sick.

African problems should have African solutions.

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.

I believe in supporting African solutions to African problems.

Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this secret that has been going on for more than two hundred years. The intermarriage of the Indian and the African in America, for example, has been constant and thorough. Colin Powell tells us in his autobiography that he is Scotch, Irish, African, Indian, and British, but all we hear is that he is African.

I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.

All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.

The African-American is often used, and has conspired with the rest of America to be used, as a diversion from America's problems. I wish African-Americans would stop contributing to this sideshow. I also wish all African-Americans would cease to sing and dance just for a generation. I think we provide too much entertainment.

I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon.

I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.

When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.

Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music. Remember, he was a chocolate, cherubic-faced genius with an African American halo. He had an Afro halo. He was a kid who was capable of embodying all of the high possibilities and the deep griefs that besieged the African American psyche.

You have Vampire Weekend who have more African references musically than most African-American artists.

As players of instruments, it is our duty to reach out and give light to those in the dark in whatever way that we can. All my actions are a fulfilment of all the African music genres - I'm only trying to maintain the culture and the tradition. I am a musician.

I don't think there is a 'gay lifestyle.' I think that's superficial crap, all that talk about gay culture. A couple of restaurants on Castro Street and a couple of magazines do not constitute culture. Michelangelo is culture. Virginia Woolf is culture. So let's don't confuse our terms. Wearing earrings is not culture.

Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.

So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features.

There's a thing called the 'One Drop' theory in African-American culture, which is if you have one drop of black blood in you, you're black.

A lot of my work reflects the incredible influence that America has had on contemporary African culture. Some of it's insidious, some of it's innocuous, some of it's invisible. It's there.

The birth of the African Union should encourage us to reexamine relations between African States.

I am African-American, and I am a proud African-American. I just don't like to put myself in a box and say, 'I'm an African-American actress.' I am an American actress, and I can do any kind of role.

When African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?

It is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict which builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.

It's depressing to see blacks wanting to dive into the mainstream of American commercial life. They come from a magnificent African culture based on aesthetics, and they all want to become fort builders like the vicious people who originally enslaved them.

The South African government, unlike a lot of African governments, isn’t poor.

Shakespeare is in many ways an African writer and 'Hamlet' would be seen as a very accurate historical saga about an African kingdom.