Quotes & Sayings About African Heritage

My African heritage is a part of reggae music roots, and the concept is that the album, 'Revelation Part 1: The Root of Life' is a tribute to roots reggae music. The fruit is what blossoms into different colors and shades, but the root has to stand predominant. — Stephen Marley

I'm very interested in heritage restoration, and I'm working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history. — Hugh Masekela

We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff. — Huey Newton

The argument is that Black History Month dwells too much on the downside of white America's relationship to its brothers of African heritage, slavery and torture and the like, and ignores the work of all the good white folk through the years who were nice to black people (did you know it was a white teacher who first suggested George Washington Carver study horticulture?). — Matt Taibbi

Luna was remote and ladylike. The only time anyone had ever seen Luna angry was when someone referred to her as 'African-American'.
"I'm an American," she had snapped, whirling on the offender. "I've never even been to Africa. I was born in California, my father was a major in the Marine Corps, and I'm not a hyphenated anything. I have a black heritage, but I also have a white one." She had held out one slim arm and studied the color of it. "Looks to me like I'm brown. We're all just different shades of brown,so don't try to set me apart. — Linda Howard

I love my heritage! I have my mother, who is an Irish-Italian, and my father who is African, so I have the taste buds of an Italian and the spice of an African. — Alicia Keys

They do not like to hear such expressions as "Negro literature," "Negro poetry," "African art," or "thinking black"; and, roughly speaking, we must concede that such things do not exist. These things did not figure in the courses which they pursued in school, and why should they? "Aren't we all Americans? Then, whatever is American is as much the heritage of the Negro as of any other group in — Carter G. Woodson

One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we do start back a little ways, but if we can be twice as good, somehow we can escape history and heritage and legacy. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind. — Kwame Nkrumah

Americans will be amazed to find ho many of the modern dance steps are relics of the African heritage. — Paul Robeson

Is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the second, by the Grace of God, still monarch of any African realm? No. this couldn't be a protest against Her Majesty to abdicate any African realm. No! Or is he or she avenging the substitution of African beliefs with Western culture by the British Missionaries who destroyed their culture and heritage? — S.A. David

As a young gay African, I have been conditioned from an early age to consider my sexuality a dangerous deviation from my true heritage as a Somali by close kin and friends. As a young gay African coming of age in London, there was another whiplash of cultural confusion that one had to recover from again and again: that accepting your sexual identity doesn't necessarily mean that the wider LGBT community, with its own preconceived notions of what constitutes a "valid" queer identity, will embrace you any more welcomingly than your own prejudiced kinsfolk do. — Diriye Osman

For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I've found my place in the world, that there's something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve..i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age ... an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences ... I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage. — Paul Robeson

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value. — Stanley Crouch

My Native American heritage was not embraced by our family, and we grew up African-American, so I didn't have a lot of access or history to that line of my family. — Tamara Tunie

Sometimes, from outside, and from America especially, where the racial tension is so intense, you tend to understand Brazil as a kind of ideal situation, but it's not. There are a lot of problems. Historically, we have been in struggle, in real struggle to protect and defend the natural leaning towards absorbing the African and the Indian heritage that our society has. — Gilberto Gil

Her father was an intimidating man who held fast to his belief in his African heritage; that black should not marry white to avoid racial confusion. She was in love with a white man whose mother wished to keep her family's heritage intact by not crossbreeding with another race. — Katherine Vogel

Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it. — Michael Shermer