Jose Antonio Vargas Quotes

The End of White Christian America

White America is in the minority.

The only difference between the Bel Air of the '90s and the Bel Air of my childhood is that now the nannies are Latina instead of British, and the cars European instead of American.

Nothing about being white describes who I am.

Even though I'm Hispanic, I'm so white.

The world is white no longer, and it will never be again.

Every day our nation grows a little darker from massive nonwhite immigration, high nonwhite birthrate and increasing racial miscegenation.

The American paradigm of race requires that there be an ‘other’ - and the other is Black people. That's what makes white people, white.

I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

One of the things that is so striking to me about the South, especially living here now as an adult, is that I see a lot more mixed-race couples than I saw when I was growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s. I feel like living across the color lines has become something that's more expected.

I always feel like I'm warring with my womanhood and wanting the world to be better, and with my blackness - which is the opposite of whiteness.

I have both Swedish and Iranian cultures ingrained in me, so that's always there. Plus my love of the U.S. began early on. But growing up in Sweden as one of the few people of color around was not easy by any means.

I have Asian friends - second generation - and I am the worst in terms of being in touch with my heritage.

I've been in situations where I was the only black guy. We're in a time now where nobody wants to see that. But it still happens.

Most white people cannot answer the question, 'What does it mean to be white?' with any depth or complexity.

I was told I wasn't black enough for certain jobs because of the way I speak and carry myself and because I was raised in Europe. It's why I left L.A.

The fans called me Jungleman. They said this young guy's not white. He's black in a white man's skin.

If you are born black, and you don't accept your natural status as a victim, then the validity of your blackness is immediately called into question.

If you were a successful upper-middle-class Negro girl in the 1950s and '60s, you were, in practice and imagination, a white Protestant upper middle-class girl. Young, good-looking white women were the most desirable creatures in the world. It was hard not to want to imitate them; it was highly toxic, too, as we would learn.

Europe and the first world to which the United States belongs remain mostly white for now, and the third world, although mixed, contains a lot of nonwhite people.

Growing up, I was constantly labeled an 'oreo' by my black peers because of my proper speech and 'valley girl accent.'

I'm half-white and half-black. No-one will ever say I'm white, but all the road men think because I'm mixed race that I can't be bad because I'm light skin. It's crazy.

People often expect that I should know a lot of things because I'm black. I don't really explain it to people, but it's like, I'm from Australia, my Mum's Aussie, and I grew up with five other Aussie brothers and sisters.

I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.

Growing up in a school that was majority white, my understanding of the world was that I was different but that differences shouldn't be talked about because it's uncomfortable.