Justin Simien Quotes

We put stereotypes on ourselves. Everybody does that. But I think it's just a little harder for black kids to just be who they are.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.

I am whatever you want me to be and I can't control that. My experience is my experience, but I can't really claim anything. I know when I take my wig off at night and I have to twist my hair up, I'm black. But I don't get too personal most of the time.

I am a black woman, and I'm proud of that, but as a showrunner, I want to think about what makes me unique beyond my race.

Somebody has always wanted me to speak as a voice of black America, but it has dawned on me that I can only speak for myself.

Many people see my early work simply as portraits of black and brown people. Really, it's an investigation of how we see those people and how they have been perceived over time.

Here I am, the artist, the person, the black woman, and the stereotype. I'm using myself and it has nothing to do with my muses or other women. It has to do with me. You see parts of my body moving, very collage like, flashing, and not speaking, just laying on a couch, looking out at the viewer.

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

Even with whatever people want to label me with, there are so many other sides to me.

Here I am, this smart, bookish girl, and I have this biker-chick name.

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.

I think that I do separate myself a fair amount. And I don't feel like I am representing women. That's up to however people interpret it once they sort of see it.

Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don't know that I'm most people's definition of what a black person is. I'm mixed, yes, but in the world I'm defined as black before I'm defined white. I've never been called white.

I've never been one to carry race on my sleeve, and I've never been one to really use my race.

I consider myself a human being, a Christian, a father, a husband, so many things, before being a black person.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor.

Did people think I sounded black? Totally, but that was a marketing tool as well, but also this is how I grew up and these are my influences.

It's important that people understand who I am and where I come from and not just have it shaped by purely political discourse.

I couldn't imagine living my life with another name.

I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.

I'm black, I don't feel burdened by it and I don't think it's a huge responsibility. It's part of who I am. It does not define me.

For one thing I tend not to see myself in various moulds that people fit me into.

I am a Canadian, a man and a Black man in that order.

The only thing Oriental about me, is my face.

I am black, and there's no getting around that, but being black doesn't define every aspect of my life.