Rachel Dolezal Quotes

I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite - I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.

I've heard that I've gotten a lighter complexion, as if I've bleached my skin. I think that is so stupid and ludicrous. For those who want to bleach their skin, that's fine. I just didn't bleach mine. I'm a black woman. I don't want to be anything but a black woman.

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

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.

With my face paint on, I don't look like a regular black dude.

My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put that out there so blatantly, so that before you listen to me you know that I'm Asian. But I thought it was sort of cool to embrace the Korean half of me, which I love.

I should not have to prove my ethnicity to anyone. I know who I am.

The one thing I've learned, getting out to all those foreign and domestic locales, is that people in every country of the 'civilized' world wish - either secretly or openly - that they had the expressiveness, the flair, the I'm-so-glad-to-be-me spirit that black folks have made a part of American life.

I am not a Hollywood Jew and I won't ever be one.

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 not a black artist, I am an artist.

I'm black, and it's a very important part of what I am. I'm not embarrassed about it.

I love my brownness.

I want to be known for what I am, black and white, because I'm proud of both.

The one thing I won't do is sacrifice my Indian identity in my music, my clothing choices. It's something I tried to hide growing up, and I would never do that again because it's such a big part of me and I'm very proud of it.

I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.

When I was a youth, to be called 'African' was a diss. At school, the African kids used to lie and say they were Jamaican. So when I first came in the game, and I'm saying lyrics like, 'I make Nigerians proud of their tribal scars/ My bars make you push up your chest like bras,' that was a big deal for me.

I just want to tell black stories.

We all want to be identified as someone cool, and I have struggled with repping where I'm from and my heritage before. It's part of growing pains. But when people see me being proud of what I am - and they are what I am too - it makes them proud. That's why I try to represent my Asian and my black side.

One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person.

I tried to do Kwanzaa with my family and was like, 'This sucks. What am I doing this for?' For me, I felt like I was doing it because I was trying to live up to someone else's idea of what 'black' was.

I'm a black American, and I'm proud to represent who and where I'm from - unapologetically. There's no shame in my game.

I would say my flow is Aboriginal. Look at my face, nose, lips, and eyes.