Naomi Campbell Quotes

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

There's this perception that there's a pipeline problem for women and people of color. I don't buy into that. I think we have a broken doorbell problem, and there are plenty of women and people of color standing at the doorstep trying to get in the door, and nobody's opening it.

Diversity in the industry is very lacking, and equal opportunity comes very far and few between for people of color.

I've witnessed racism all my life. And of course there's racism and discrimination in Hollywood. You go for a part and they say, 'Oh, we really liked her, she's amazing, but we wanted to go with something more traditional'. As if I'm not a traditional American!

...The Court ...[recognizes]...the persistence of racial inequality and a majority's acknowledgement of Congress's authority to act affirmatively, not only to end discrimination, but also to counteract discrimination's lingering effects. Those effects, reflective of a system of racial caste [legal segregation and discrimination] only recently ended, are evident in our work places, markets, and neighborhoods. Job applicants with identical resumes, qualifications, and interview styles still experience different receptions, depending on their race.

When I went to Fashion Week, I was very disappointed by how few women of color were in those shows. I do speak to the younger girls, and I hear them when they say they're not getting the big contracts or into the big shows.

When I went to Fashion Week, I was very disappointed by how few women of color were in those shows. I do speak to the younger girls, and I hear them when they say they're not getting the big contracts or into the big shows. So, to sum it up, it seems that whenever we take a couple of steps forward, we take a few more backwards.

A lot of my friends who are white are like, 'Dude, I can't get an audition; it's all Hispanic and black.' It's about time.

I realize that 'hire qualified women!' is the sort of outraged demand that's often met with a sigh. No one disagrees, and yet gender inequality in high-paying positions extends into all professions.

Donorschoose.org is the one place where somebody with $10 gets the same level of impact and feedback from the recipients that Bill Gates gets when he's making a million-dollar gift.

As a patron of a youth education charity it is my duty to use my platform as a voice for all, regardless of background.

For a while, I became a model scout and agent, thinking naively I could change the industry from the inside, and even kicked off the famous 'size zero debate' with an article I wrote to the 'Evening Standard' about my concerns from behind the curtain of the business, back in 2005.

It became very obvious to me that in the United States of America, a fluffy ethnic disabled chick was never going to get a job unless she did stand-up.

It turns out that the term 'diversity' can be anything from black faculty to military veterans. Well, I am both, but have yet to be subjected to discrimination because I'm a veteran.

If you're going to compare a middle-income black kid with a middle- income white kid, and, say, you control for family background, family education, and family income, and if this middle-income black kid doesn't score as well as the white kid on the test, then I say, look, you haven't taken into consideration the cumulative effect of living in a segregated neighborhood and going to a de facto segregated school. You're denying a position at Harvard or some other place to a kid that really could make it. That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

People talk about Jim Crow as if it's dead. Jim Crow isn't gone. It's adjusted. Look at the disproportionate sentences meted out to blacks caught up in the criminal justice system. There's a problem when people profit from putting and keeping African Americans in prison. We need to do a better job as a nation understanding the real values the country's built upon in terms of fairness, equality and equal opportunity.

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

What makes it frustrating is when a director or a studio head doesn't see me for the same part that they'll see, let's say, Drew Barrymore for. Drew's a great friend of mine. But it's like, "No, we want more of an American type of girl."

So if you're black or brown, you can make money in America, you can get rich in America... but whatever you decide to do, it better be positive, 'cause if one person is harmed, you will be destroyed. You see Oprah, she just be giving away money. She's doing that to keep the Feds off her back.

That is my job as an intellectual, as an extension of my vocation: to engage in a serious reckoning with the present manifestation of both white supremacy, white refusal to acknowledge culpability, and the attempts of black people to re-describe the harm and trauma we've endured, as well as to say afresh what it is that must be done if we are to be conscientious.

My heart is so heavy when I see the reality of the Indian reservation and as an American, I know I am, too, responsible.

Those of us that get to a certain level, we have to start giving back to our communities, giving information it's something that you have to do. It's either realize that you're a great individual by nature and move towards that or just accept the white man telling you: 'you're never going to prosper, this world isn't meant for you to prosper, we have privilege, you don't, that's it.'

If the white man can come here uneducated and as an immigrant, and within 10 or 15 years set up an industry that provides job opportunities and educational opportunities for black people, then if the black man, the black leadership, who has access to all of this money and has all of these degrees today, can't use his talent and his know-how to set up business opportunities, job opportunities, housing opportunities for the black people the same as the white leaders have done for white people, then these black leaders need to get off the boat.

There are some who ask us to believe that if we want the best of times for ourselves, the fit and the fortunate, then we'll just have to learn to live with the worst of times for millions of other Americans - that we're doomed to be a nation of the lucky and the left-out. I don't believe it. My mother didn't believe it. Your ancestors didn't believe it. And I don't think you should believe it.

[T]here's nobody Black in charge of anything in Hollywood.