Tika Sumpter Quotes

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.

Usually when you're Asian and you're on set, you're the only Asian there. Either you're the token Asian or you're the Asian sidekick.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

Of course I worry about whitewashing, and I feel very strongly that whitewashing was, is, and continues to be a problem in entertainment.

No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.

When I first started, all the media I ever got was, 'Hey! There's this Indian girl. And even though she is Indian, she gets views and stuff.'

A lot of roles for people with disabilities are quite patronising. It's a real pity when they are just used to give dull PC kudos to a drama, or when they're wheeled on in a tokenistic way without any real involvement in the plot.

I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.

'Hollywood maids' are so idiotic. They grin at everything. I told Norman Lear I didn't want to play a maid because of that 'hee-hee/grin-grin' attitude, and he said, 'Who said I wanted that?' He told me he wanted two strong women that are the black and white of the same coin. I said, 'Oh, well - in that case, I'll be right there!'

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.

I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback.

When you're brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.

Television shows and movies that are all white, I can't watch them. They totally alienate me.

Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.'

We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'

I didn't think it was possible for Asians to be actors.

Being the one woman in the room should not be seen as a victory. If there's only one of us in the room, we're still a token; we don't actually have an empowered voice. If there's two of us, we're still a minority. If there's three, then we're allowed to have a multiplicity of opinions.

There are racial and gender implications to how we think about what leadership looks like in the country.

The way Hollywood and TV is, black people don't have any choice but to see ourselves in white-dominated television shows and stories and movies.

Growing up, usually when I saw a black female on television, she was either a broken character or sidekick.

Especially when you're queer and you're a person of color, you're so used to being the token on set. Inevitably you have to answer dumb questions from someone. You're the 'other.'

I'm not just a token Muslim.