I think what happened during the Great Depression was that African Americans understood that Republicans championed citizenship and voting rights but they became impatient for economic emancipation.
America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.
Panama’s a really wonderful country. There’s obviously the Panama Canal, which brings a lot of tourism, and a huge American influence; it’s just a mix of so many great things: African, Caribbean, Latin American Spanish, all kinds of influences there.
In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture – meaning the culture of America – if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.
As strong as we are, we have our moments. My mama is an African woman who had four kids and was a nurse for 25 years, and she had her moments. I’ve seen her cry.
My foundation was created so I can find a way to improve the living conditions of my people in the African continent, not just in Congo.
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.
As a young African, the sense of opportunity that fills my head on a daily basis is, I suspect, reminiscent of how young Africans felt at the cusp of independence.
I’m proud to be an American. I’m proud to be an African American in America. I’ve had some interesting experiences: some great, some not so great, but I love it here.
Zimbabwe is an unusual case study in African colonialism in that it was invaded by a private company under Royal Charter.
I was raised on African music, Harry Belafonte, and the Boston Pops. Then I got a dose of soul and hip-hop. I related to it immediately.
The richest persons in Africa are heads of state, governors and ministers. So every ‘educated’ African who wants to be rich – and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich – heads straight into government or politics.
Delaware State is no longer a college for African Americans without other choices, it is a university of choice.
There is an Islamic population in France, most of which comes from the North African countries.
People identify with me – everyone does – African American women, Caucasian women, they all identify with me because I’m ethnic.
By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.
African leaders work really under severe limitations and constraints.
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.
I am inspired by Nelson Mandela. I was a volunteer teacher in South Africa during apartheid, where I witnessed his success liberating black South Africans.
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.
We still have to create things for African American women. Just like Tyler Perry is doing it, we can’t wait for things to happen; you have to go and make and create roles and go to people.
In short, we have, among African countries, a duty of solidarity.
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.
Franschhoek – French Corner – is a place which serves South Africans as a kind of sophisticated fantasy, an alternative version of what life could be. The small town is enclosed by wild mountains, at this time of year blue and dusty green.
Mugabe’s become a disgrace to Africa. And I must say this because I am an African and a lot of us looked up to him back in the 1980s when he was the liberation hero. But he’s now turned himself into a murderous despot.
I’ve made it my mission to make movies starring African American actors and about the African American experience and put them in the mainstream. They’re very universal stories I’ve told – every movie I’ve done.
History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.
I know exactly what I will do. I will go and work with the Congress of South African Students.
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?
Music is an expression of who you are, and – at least in that sense – I think I epitomize Black Lives Matter. I’m a big black man, and I’m easily misunderstood. Before I started wearing these African clothes, people would assume that I was a threat and that it was O.K. to be violent toward me.
In America, black urban teenagers have long been lacking in inclusion. In France, there is a comparable lack of inclusion among North Africans. In much of Europe, there has been little attempt to include the Roma.
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
It was cool to play an African princess who’s the smartest in the whole world. That never happens. So I hope all the young girls can feel smart, too.
Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can’t drop that. It’s reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.
I’ll make a general comment about this whole dependence on ‘celebrities.’ I object to this situation as it is right now, where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.
The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the Africans.
I remember when I first came to America, nobody had a clue what a black Englishman was. I was either South African or Australian to them.
I have strong views about South African politics and I still don’t feel I need to make public statements.
I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
We 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.
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.
I created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation back in 1997 for the purpose of going in and improving the living conditions of my people on the African continent, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I came from. Out first mission was to go and build a new hospital. Our next mission was to build a school.
I’d like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.
There’s a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up – or didn’t – and Jamaican stories.
I think I would like to see more roles for South Asian performers that are more inclusive and part of the American Diaspora, the American tapestry, perhaps the way that African American and Hispanic roles have developed.
Many, many people of the Revolutionary generation, the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War, understood that slavery was somehow in contradiction to what America was saying it was. And many of those folks also, at the very least, gave land to African Americans when they were liberated.
Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of ‘the dozens.’
Football is a personal interest which has been turned into a philanthropic initiative directed at encouraging social cohesion during the difficult process of African modernisation.
Hardest of all for Europeans to negotiate are traditional African religions, whose transactions with unseen powers are central to the running of life in many areas, the main weapon in the struggle against the forces of evil.
