Charles D. B. King Quotes

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

Africans in the diaspora were constantly being reminded of Africa by their European masters who tried to impress upon them that Africa was primitive. Repudiating this thinly veiled justification of slavery required diaspora intellectuals to focus on Africa and demonstrate that it had made major contributions to world civilization. Consciousness of Africa was also sustained by the continuous flow of people, ideas, values, visions, practices, and expressive culture from Africa to the Americas and vice-versa.

Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.

Africa for the Africans.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

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.

It is urgently necessary that we recognize our own limitations as a moral and ideological force among the Asiatic peoples. Our political philosophy and our patterns for living have very little applicability to masses of people in Asia. They may be all right for us, with our highly developed political traditions running back into the centuries and with our peculiarly favorable geographic position; but they are simply not practical or helpful, today, for most of the people in Asia.

Our brother (many of the Jews of the Middle East) has gone to Europe and to the West [and] come back a Russified Jew, a Polish Jew, a German Jew, an English Jew. He has come back with a totally different conception of things. Western and not Eastern…, coming back with imperialistic ideas, with reactionary or revolutionary ideas… he is not the old cousin, and we do not extend to him a very good welcome

Everything on our land is holy to us and we will defend it and never be deceived, nor will we argue about biblical lies that penetrated the minds of some orientalists. We say: This land belongs to us. Jerusalem has been the capital of our capitals since the dawn of history, and will remain so. We won't share it with anyone. This land has known many tribes and invaders, from Mongolia in the East to the West. They all disappeared. The land is not theirs

In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life, and the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we have been committing on their population.

Having uncritically accepted [Western] culture in everything, we now find we have lost our hold on the autonomous ideals of the Japanese race.

The United States is pursuing a series of goals (spreading democracy, asserting its hegemony, securing oil supplies) that are ultimately incompatible.

Note how the decay of one nation invigorates another. This strange white man -- consider him, his gifts are manifold! His tireless brain, his busy hands do wonders for his race. Those things which we despise he holds as treasures; yet he is so great and so flourishing that there must be some virtue and truth in his philosophy.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

It is the fight for national existence which sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. Later on it is the nation which will ensure the conditions and framework necessary to culture

The West interfered into Japan’s affairs …and managed to save Japan from tyranny. Today, Japan is regarded as a model of democracy, of liberties and all the advantages that the West has produced.

These fears, held by indigenous Fijians, must not be ridiculed but understood and addressed. In the final analysis it will be counterproductive to impose democracy on people who have yet to fully understand how it will sit against everything they believe in.

The Iraqis have a country that inherited cultures thousands of years old while the Americans have a culture only two hundred years old. Two hundred years will teach thousands of years? Oh Americans, leave Iraq for its people.

No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue.

Cultural difference cannot be an excuse for the blatant levels of corruption that bedevil many parts of Africa. Corruption is one of Africa’s key problems. African societies are riddled with it – from kleptocratic leaders at the top, salting money away in Western bank accounts, to soldiers at roadblocks demanding bribes to let you through, to clerks in government bureaucracies charging to hand out official forms. But we in the rich world do not have clean hands here. Corruption is fed by big Western companies that routinely offer bribes to African leaders.

When you first leave Uganda for Europe you think, ‘At last, I'm free to do what I want’. But when you arrive there, you become an African for the first time, in a sense. Because you are responsible for Somalia! They call you up and say, ‘What do you think about Somalia?’ And you can't say, ‘I'm Ugandan, I have nothing to say about Somalia’. You have this big, huge chunk of experience to defend --and you will defend it, because nobody else is defending it. You become some sort of an ambassador and for the first time you become conscious of what Africa means.

The paradox of American policy in the Middle East — promoting democracy on the assumption it will bring countries closer to the West — is that almost everywhere there are free elections, the American-backed side tends to lose.

There has been, no doubt, a considerable and very rapid change, … as the result of the importation of Western ideas from without by Young Chinese who have been educated abroad and who have returned to their own country not only imbued with Western conceptions, but so greatly estranged from all the old Chinese conceptions that they almost as much lost contact with the Chinese point of view as if they themselves were foreigners by birth.

Promoting democracy is one goal of U. S. foreign policy dating back at least 100 years. But it has always been one goal of many, often negated and outweighed by other competing interests.

People the world over now see democracy promotion as a dishonest, dangerous cover for the protection of U. S. power and influence.