When Europeans came upon real ruined cities they refused to believe that they had been built by Africans. Here the past has been distorted and denied.
I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.
From the time of independences until the end of the Cold War, in spite of the participation of a considerable number of African states in the non-aligned movement, everyone in fact chose to align with one or another of the two major blocks.
Even if the production doesn't feel African, the vocal delivery - singing through your nose. Specifically, Highlife music from Nigeria. That was the first music I ever heard as a child. So singing through my nose is something I do often, and that's directly rooted in my heritage.
One consequence of racism and segregation is that many American whites know little or nothing about the daily lives of African Americans. Black America's least-understood communities are those poor, hyper-segregated places we once called ghettos. These neighborhoods are not far away, but they might as well be on the moon.
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.
It's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.
Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don't belong anymore to anyone, that I'm not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.
I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.
As an African American actress, there are people who have been staples in my life that opened a door that I can walk through. I hope that I can have that impact.
The African Americans' story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn't going to work.
We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.
Southern states in the confederacy were not ready to give up their fight to secede or give up their way of life, which was made possible in large part through the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves.
What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.
With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.
Unlike their Western counterparts, Africans take elections very seriously - rising up early to queue patiently in line for hours under the hot sun and cast their ballots. Any misguided attempt to nullify or steal their votes will evoke a strong reaction from them.
We are African in origin and American in birth.
We wish to ensure that young Africans do not feel disorientated in the century in which they live.
I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.
In the early 1800s, both Spain and Portugal disseminated the smallpox vaccine throughout the Americas via the 'arm to arm of the blacks,' that is, enslaved Africans and African-Americans, often children, who were being moved along slave routes as cargo from one city to another to be sold.
Oddly enough, Asians are a much smaller 'minority' than African Americans in this country. But because Asians are so successful, college admission officers don't feel sorry for them, so they are not a preferred 'minority.'
From the world wars of Europe to the jungles of the Far East, from the deserts of the Middle East to the African continent, and even here in our own hemisphere, our veterans have made the world a better place and America the great country we are today.
I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.
From 1971 to 1993, my family lived in a number of African countries, including Malawi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Nigeria, as well as Uganda itself.
I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback.
I'm now on a journey to fulfill the wish, in my tiny capacity, of little African girls.
If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.
I was taught about slavery, but it was the ancient Egyptians. That's the closest I got to African history.
Well, I'm a daughter of the great migration as, really, the majority of African Americans that you meet in the north and west are products of the great migration. It's that massive. Many of us owe our very existence to the fact that people migrated.
Many African people are smarter than me - kids who could have been better. I have no claim for genius.
Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.
The humanity that is given to other people isn't given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.
Unfortunately, a lot of Silicon Valley venture capitalists are disconnected from African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color.
Once there are more African Americans and Asian Americans behind the scenes as producers, writers, and directors, I think more inclusive casting will happen.
I was born in Evanston, about three blocks away from the Chicago border. My mother, at the time, was finishing her Ph.D. in African History at Northwestern University. Soon after my birth, my parents split, and my father moved to Wicker Park, which is on the north side of the city.
When we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent.
