Sylvia Wynter

"Where Africa as our ‘origin’ becomes important is in recognizing that if we are going to tell a different story of ourselves, we must grapple with the beginnings, in which Africa is not only important for Blacks but the key. They want us to think about Africa as a way to think about affliction but it is Africa that gives us so much of our language world, and gave us much of what has been transformed over time, and continues of course into the present. And so you see, we cannot have the Third Event without Africa right at the middle—because how do you tell the story differently if the beginning hasn’t been grappled with?"

"The affliction of today is one concerned with who we are—and the need for a we. The question is, “What will be the cure?” That is where the Third Event becomes important you see, because it is a recognition that we are a species, but not in the manner we have been accustomed to, that we can narrate this problem in a different way."

"Public officials of the judicial system of Los Angeles routinely use the acronym ‘N.H.I.’ to refer to any case that involved a breach of the rights of young Black males who belonged to the jobless category of the inner city ghettos. N.H.I. means ‘no humans involved.’"

"this is where the potential of Black studies was! Language is the way that we will carry ourselves out of these problems we have—that is what is important now to remember about Black studies during those early years, that it was one part of a bigger project of developing a transformation of knowledge and therefore the transformation of the whole of society, by using a different language to address these intellectual concerns."

"in this country we must begin to think about education as an initiation into a world full of symbols and descriptions about who we are. Thinking of it as initiation helps us to understand the importance of introducing something else into the lives and worlds of children. Initiation also gives an understanding of the symbolic significance of education, and how language and art structure the whole of our existence. We need to re-initiate ourselves, a symbolic life through death, and create ourselves anew!"