Afro Quotes

Some years ago I said in an opinion that if this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-Americans didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down. ~ Thurgood Marshall

What undercuts the power of women's anger in the end is not the melancholy that Butler charts, but material realities - economics, not psychology. While Em fantasizes about the possibility of Afro- and Euro-Jamaican women building partnerships to work for each other, she seems to understand that she has no concrete possibilities for realizing this fantasy in 1920s Jamaica. ~ Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley

I grew up in New York. We were all diversified, as far as music was concerned. I grew up liking just about everything. So I tried to incorporate that into my playing, although the original school where I came from was Afro-Cuban music. But I liked all kinds of music
I tried to bring that into everything. ~ Don Alias

I had the afro when I was in high school. I had the flattop during a short period in the early '90s. And I've had different variations of dreadlocks. I'll admit to those! ~ Tim Meadows

Women hating men is not an aberrant or unexpected response, but rather natural response to being controlled, and to being viewed as less than human by an oppressor. Afro-American slaves hated their owners; women hate theirs. ~ Coleen Kearon

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. ~ Magnus Linton

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business? ~ Zadie Smith

When I started producing, I was just making music under all different names. 'Black Afro.' 'Super Grandmaster.' 'Mister Bull.' Like, the most stupid, idiotic names. 'Afrojack' was one of those idiotic names. ~ Afrojack

In the discussion at Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined for a while, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The other told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who was preaching Blackness at the Berkley campus of the University of California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-American Association.

I went to Berkley to find Warden and hear what he was saying. The first member I met, though, was Maurice Dawson, one of Warden's tight partners. He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come searching for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about "Afro-Americans." The term was new to me. Dawson really put me down. "You know what an Afro-Cucan is?" "Yes" "You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?" "Yes" "Then why don't you know what an Afro-American is?" It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was stilled interested.

Maurice taught me a lesson that I try to apply to the Black Panther Party today. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed with him. I try to be cordial, because ~ Huey P. Newton

The common goal of 22 million Afro-Americans is respect as human beings, the God-given right to be a human being. Our common goal is to obtain the human rights America has been denying us. We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans. ~ Malcolm X

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American. ~ Jon Secada

When I have my Afro and walk down the street, there's no doubt that I'm black. With this [straightened] hair, if I talk about being black on air, viewers write and say, "You're black?!" I feel [straightening your hair] is giving up a sense of your identity. Let's be honest: It's an effort to look Anglo-Saxon. ~ Jami Floyd

This development signified also that jazz would someday have to contend with the idea of its being an art (since that was the white man's only way into it). The emergence of the white player meant that Afro-American culture had already become the expression of a particular kind of American experience, and what is most important, that this experience was available intellectually, that it could be learned. ~ Amiri Baraka

Natural Hair is an Exquisite Crown. It's a wonder and fascination to many. But to the confident Black girl or Black woman who's rockin' it, they know what they've been born and blessed with. A head full of unique, healthy beauty. NATURAL BEAUTY. ~ Stephanie Lahart

When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society. ~ Wole Soyinka

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched. ~ Ida B. Wells

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old. ~ Grace Jones

Life begins before a soul is born and commences once again with the act of dying, and as in the Afro-Asian symbol of the snake of eternity swallowing its tail, all is in flux, all comes full circle, with no beginning and no end. ~ Peter Matthiessen

OUCH

"The arrabal (a term used for poor neighbourhoods in Argentina and Uruguay) and carpa (informal mobile theatre set up inside tents, once common in Latin America), with their caliente (hot) rhythms such as the rumba or the cha-cha-cha, were conquering audiences all over the world, a trend allegorised in song lyrics about their popularity among the French and other non-Latin Americans - "The Frenchman has fun like this/as does the German/and the Irishman has a ball/as does even the Muslim" ("Cachita") - even as they filtered in the presence of a blackness - "and if you want to dance/look for your Cachita/and tell her "Come on negrita"/let's dance" - denied in the official discourse of those Spanish=speaking countries wielding the greatest economic power in the region: namely, Argentina and Mexico, the latter of which would eventually incorporate Afro-Latin American culture into its cinema - although being careful to mark it as Cuban and not Mexican. ~ Robert McKee Irwin

I see other black women imitate my style, which is no style at all, but just letting our hair be itself. They call it the Afro Look. ~ Miriam Makeba

But I like my big Afro. I also liked when my hair was longer and relaxed. I'm happy to have choices. They're mine to make ~ Nicola Yoon

She does her hair in an Afro like Cicely Tyson, that famous actress I seen on TV once, or Angela Davis, who I don't know exactly who she is but they say she's got guts and ain't scared of white people. ~ James McBride

Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. ~ Ida B. Wells

A friend of mine who works for naval intelligence said an aerial satellite revealed that 1.9 million attended the event in 1995. But if they would have had a rumble at the march the newspapers would have said that 75 million Afro-Americans were there. ~ Dick Gregory

When I was 12 years old, I went to Natchitoches, La.; it was summer vacation with my family. We visited a plantation, Melrose. And I met an Afro-American woman who was a painter. I already had some idea of what I wanted to do in life, and one of the things that interested me was painting. ~ Robert Wilson

Yes, (Bush is a) racist. We all knew that but the world is only finding it out now. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died from (the) death penalty were Afro-Americans or Hispanics. (Bush) promoted a Conservative program, designed to eliminate everything Americans had accomplished so far in matters of race and equality. ~ Danny Glover

When I first came out to L.A., Hollywood's idea of a Latina was Mexican. It was almost like they had never seen or heard of an Afro-Latina before. ~ Lauren Velez

Complacent eligible voters who abstained from voting because "I don't like either candidate" - provided a deadly assist. You are the collective of assassins responsible for slaughtering the America of hope and progress.

Afro Bo Peep ~ Erin Passons

The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home, and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system - the violence is already there, and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say that they are opposed to Negroes 'resorting to violence' what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists. ~ Robert F. Williams

I remembered watching Slim Goodbody on TV, an odd white guy with a small Afro who wore a full-body leotard with the inside of the human body painted on it, which made him look as if he'd been flayed alive. He ~ Jenny Lawson

The dream is not a map. A poem is not the territory. The dreamer reclines in a barbershop carpeted with Afro turf. In the dark some soul yells. It hurts to walk barefoot on cowrie shells. ~ Harryette Mullen

To understand our world, we must use a revolving globe and look at the earth from various vantage points. If we do so, we will see that the Atlantic is but a bridge linking the colorful, tropical Afro-Latin American world, whose strong ethnic and cultural bonds have been preserved to this day. For a Cuban who arrives in Angola, neither the climate, nor the landscape, nor the food are strange. For a Brazilian, even the language is the same. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

We are not only a Latin American nation, we are an Afro-American nation also. ~ Fidel Castro

I'm black. I'm Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian. ~ Soledad O'Brien

Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue.
"Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!"
Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am not going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!"
A colored yeti in a clip-on uniform swooped. "Wassa bovver?"
"This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," said the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window."
I couldn't believe I was hearing this. ~ David Mitchell

Afro-Americans. Which is but a wedding, however, of two confusions, an arbitrary linking of two undefined and currently undefinable proper nouns. I mean that, in the case of Africa, Africa is still chained to Europe, and exploited by Europe, and Europe and America are chained together; and as long as this is so, it is hard to speak of Africa except as a cradle and a potential. Not until the many millions of people on the continent of Africa control their land and their resources will the African personality flower or genuinely African institutions flourish and reveal Africa as she is. ~ James Baldwin

Someone must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen to me to do so. The awful death roll called every week is appalling, not only because of the lives taken, the cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters. ~ William Wells Brown

Man leave the past in the past. That's where it belongs. The trouble with addicts is that they carry bad memories around with them - like old luggage. And in that luggage that's where they carry their blueprint for living. You got to decide what's worth keeping, and then set the rest of it on the curb for the garbage.
-Joseph ~ Valjeanne Jeffers

In every project, I always look for the depth of humanity inside of it. I'm just trying to say if we can help in some way heal the equation with [Afro-Americans] what's going on with us as people. ~ Forest Whitaker

What I'm trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock. ~ Jack Bruce

Fidel, in a speech, had told the people, We are all Afro-Cubans, from the very lightest to the very darkest. ~ Assata Shakur

When and where there is repression, what a woman does when she gets dressed in the morning may be considered political. Wearing or not wearing a veil, disobeying laws that prohibit transgender dressing, or wearing a large Afro in an institution that seeks to diminish the formation of racial alliances are all actions that can serve as challenges to domination ~ Maxine Leeds Craig

There is a theorem that colloquially translates, You cannot comb the hair on a bowling ball ... Clearly, none of these mathematicians had Afros, because to comb an Afro is to pick it straight away from the scalp. If bowling balls had Afros, then yes, they could be combed without violation of mathematical theorems. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music. ~ Alexis Korner

At Snortin' Reformatory, a notorious Washington, D.C. jail located in the northern Virginia suburbs, The Afro-Anarchists were being thrown into a cell. It was a situation that the three of them, like many young black males in the D.C. area, had long ago come to expect as a rite of passage.
As the door slammed shut behind them, Bucktooth spoke. "Man, Phosphate, they didn't read us our rights or nothin'."
"Yeah, Phos," Fontaine chimed in, "I didn't think they had to beat us, neither. And whoever heard of being charged with singing too loud and off-key in a public establishment? I don't believe there is no kind of law for that shit. ~ Donald Jeffries

Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back ...
The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time ... ~ Nalo Hopkinson

When I say Afro-American aesthetic, I'm not just talking about the United States, I'm talking about the Americas. People in the Latin countries read my books because they share the same international aesthetic that I'm into and have been into for a long time. And it's multicultural. ~ Ishmael Reed

The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. ~ Ida B. Wells

You may be amazed that you are still unique and beautiful as your natural self. Only you can decide if this style is for you. ~ Monica Millner

The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense. ~ Ida B. Wells

Afro-Caribbean influences are in me as a creative being the same way Spanish influences were in Picasso's work. I think the notion of labels - "black dancer, black choreographer" -is a ploy to divide and conquer, and to limit. ~ Garth Fagan

An afro is a poor man's haircut. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A rap pro, do a show, good to go, also
Cameo afro, Virgo, domino, I go Rambo,
Gigolo, Romeo, Friday night spend money on a ho ... tel,
To get a good night's sleep, I'm keeping in step.
Now do I come off? Yep. ~ Big Daddy Kane

Hacking shampoos, conditioners, gels and creams with your oil(s) of choice is a great way to promote healthy strong hair growth. ~ Monica Millner

I loved going to the library. It was the first time I ever saw Black newspapers and magazines like JET, Ebony, the Baltimore Afro-American, or the Chicago Defender. And I'll never forget my librarian. ~ John Lewis

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. ~ Malcolm X

It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally released from pink plastic rollers, sprang free and full, flowing down her back like a celebration. Her father called it a crown of glory. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The South resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law. ~ Ida B. Wells

One of my dreams is to expand and make sure African music and Afro Beats music is really on the map. I would like to be a contribution to that success. ~ Ice Prince

I was forever trying to get the perfect 1970's Michael Jackson Afro. What I had was more Buckwheat--unruly and impossible to comb, like stabbing a pitchfork into a bed of crab grass. ~ Trevor Noah

In Italy, I had an Afro, and a lot of the kids came up and felt my hair. It really was funny. I wish I had understood Italian. ~ Sugar Ray Leonard

Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17
old enough to know better. ~ Helen McCrory

My mother is Afro-Caribbean and my father is Caucasian-American, and I was born in Pennsylvania and moved to the Cayman Islands when I was about 2. So I grew up there with my mother, and it's really all I know. I grew up there until it was time to go to college, and that's when I moved back to America. ~ Grace Gealey

There came a point when I wanted to do television, and I didn't think the Afro was going to play, so I made a very difficult choice - to straighten my hair. ~ Jami Floyd

Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the colour of polished mahogany. ~ William Hjortsberg

DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem. ~ Audre Lorde

Patriarchy has been the normal in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. ...If patriarchy in Afro-Asia resulted from some chance occurrence, why were the Aztecs and Incas patriarchal? It is far more likely that even though the precise definition of man and woman varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is; there are plenty of theories, none of the convincing. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Yes, but the thing is my influences are so rooted in afro-American culture especially that it's quite sad to not enjoy the same success because the influences are so strong from there. ~ Mick Hucknall

I had a great fashion season in September so I told my agent that I would really like to walk the 2015 Victoria's Secret fashion show whilst rocking my short Afro hair. ~ Maria Borges

Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American ... Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed. ~ Colson Whitehead

A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality. ~ Ishmael Reed

To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Where does South Africa find herself now in the post-apartheid dilemma? Is this country still a believer in the country of blood, milk and honey, does she seek perfection in the reports of minorities, the land of thirst, of afro and political activists who were active in 'the struggle' what happened to their children, their wives and their husbands? There are no longer straitjackets and cold showers in the lunatic asylum. Banging their heads against the walls. Banging, banging and banging away like an empty drum. Every generation wants to change the world. There must be unification of some kind. Students brought together by protest marches. ~ Abigail George

Samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it's also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive - because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it. ~ Mick Jagger

I always thought he gave me that name because I have a kind of outgoing or sunny disposition. And in those days I was kinda blonde and bearded and had an afro and was bushy like a sun. So I don't know, he named me Surya Das but who knows. ~ Surya Das

He was only five-foot-ten, but people frequently mistook him for being over six feet, at least in part because his gigantic Afro made him appear larger than life. His thin, angular frame, which was shaped like an inverted triangle, furthered this illusion; he had narrow hips, a small waist, but impossibly wide shoulders and arms. His fingers were abnormally long and sinuous, and like the rest of him, they were a rich caramel color. His bandmates jokingly called him "The Bat" because of his preference for covering his windows and sleeping during the day, but the nickname also fit his penchant for wearing capes, which furthered his superhero appearance. ~ Charles R. Cross

Shug Avery sat up in bed a little today. I wash and comb out her hair. She got the nottiest, shortest, kinkiest hair I ever saw, and I loves every strand of it. ~ Alice Walker

I feel that the kinks, curls, or tight coils in Afro hair is beautiful and unique. No other race on this planet has hair like ours - that makes me proud. ~ Monica Millner