Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with.
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.
We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls.
Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself.
The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status.
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.
What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa.
Nowadays, people always say, how come he's doing such young shows? But they never mention The Mod Squad. I was very proud of that show. It's the first time an African-American guy kissed a white girl.
There was a time in the '90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn't fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.
America was magnificently characterized in November of 2008 when we elected, for the first time, an African-American President of the United States.
I think the '90s is the reason why I recently had to find natural haircare products to allow my hair to grow. That was a time where they were processing your hair, and it was a time when African-American women wanted that straight hair.
Don't say you want to be an actor and not know how to read a script. Don't give up 15 minutes before the miracle comes. Everyone's career ebbs and flows, especially if you're African American. That's the time to dig in and keep your instrument sharp.
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.
The fact that women are very young in obtaining their civil rights and African-Americans are young in obtaining their civil rights, I think it's about time that we extend that to all Americans, whether straight, gay, purple, green, black, brown.
My trainer, George Francis, used to train a lot of African boxers. They're hungry guys, man. They've got no trainers, got nothing. They're so hungry to do boxing, to make some money.
The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-dete...
Reggie Campbell and Kathleen Goldsmith are participants in an American success story, the unprecedented boom of home-buying by African-Americans in the 1990s. Only he is black and she is white. When he moved into the neighborhood, she moved out.
When I got my success, I became decadent for a while. This was 2003 to 2008. I fell for tiramisu really hard. I've become more moderate since, because African-Americans are prone to diabetes.
Cumbia is a beautiful rhythm. It's a music that has indigenous, African and European components. It's played in all of America - from Argentina to the U.S. It has mutated and been nurtured by everyone who comes across it.
When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African ...
It's a privilege to serve the poor, to be servants of noble Africans, but I better belong in the rehearsal room or in the studio with my band. That's where I want to be and I still wake up in the morning with melodies in my head.
