Quotes on African

The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.

I'm playing deep African music.

When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.

It is African scholars themselves who will create the ultimate Encyclopaedia Africana.

I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.

The art, the greatness of the music, the experience of the music is what I'm about. I think most African artists have destroyed their artistry by commercialization, and I don't want to belong to that bag.

We know so much about the European food story, and we're getting to know about the American food story; but we know so little about the African food story.

Whenever you go through the length and breadth of our country... you see a long face: you will see the long face of an African woman because she's black, because she's poor.

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

Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.

It wasn't until I came to New York and started to see the African American community, but also the Ethiopian community here, and started to eat the food, started to understand the music. I said, you know, I got to go and understand the culture. So me and my sister went.

The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.

There is a reason that many African Americans have a healthy mistrust for law enforcement. We don't always feel protected or served by that particular institution.

Too many African countries have already hit rock-bottom - ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further to go down.

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

I am fortunate: my parents told me the world was my oyster, when they could have said I wouldn't make it for a lot of reasons - rural, girl, small African country. So, no regrets.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.

There is, for me, as a black woman, as an African woman, a sense of possibility in America that I don't feel when I'm in Europe.

The humanity that is given to other people isn't given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.

Everyone mentions the fact that I am the first African GM. I think it means nothing unless you impact people in Africa. That's what we're trying to try to continue to do - impact the game and make an impact on people over there.