Black in Other Cultures
- In Japanese culture, kuro (black) is a symbol of nobility, age, and experience, as opposed to shiro (white), which symbolizes serfdom, youth, and naiveté. Thus the black belt is a mark of achievement and seniority in many martial arts, whereas a white belt is worn by a novice. In Japanese culture, black is also associated with honor.
- In Japan, white, not black, is associated with death, and is the color of mourning.
- In ancient China, black was the symbol of North and Water, one of the main five colors.
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Famous quotes containing the words black and/or cultures:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)