Natasha Trethewey Quotes

Well, I think that I have a complicated relationship with whiteness because oftentimes, I pass as white, and I recognize that. I would be disingenuous to pretend that I don't pass as white.

To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.

While I was able to pass as white as soon as I came to America, this was not really possible while I was growing up, as it was pretty obvious that I wasn't 'all German.' So my privilege was that in America, I could conveniently withhold one of my bloodlines and avoid racism and discrimination. That is not a privilege most people of color have.

In black America there's such a thing as passing, the black people who are light skinned and they will pass for white.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'

I'm a quarter Chinese and three-quarter Filipino. I don't look Filipino; I look more Chinese or Korean. It actually works in my favor: in terms of roles, it gives me a broader canvas.

For the majority of the time, I may as well have been just a really tan white kid. You know, I may as well have just been, like, a fat kid.

I thought I was half white or something because I only know white people as Ferguson as their last name.

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

My blood's not red or blue - it's brown.

People didn't seem able to consider that maybe both were true. OK, I was born to white parents, but maybe I had an authentic black identity.

Please don't erase my race because I'm white-passing. There is literally nothing I can do about my complexion.

I'm Jewish, so it's like I'm not totally white. I'm, like, gray.

Don't fault me for wearing a 20-inch blond wig - it doesn't mean I want to be a white person.

Ali was actually able to fool some people into thinking that Foreman was actually a white man.

When you look at me, you can't really tell what I am, but I'm black, white, Native, Spanish, and a little bit of Filipino.

I'm half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I'm Latina when they meet me. That's what made me learn Spanish.

I, in particular, am in a confusing spot because I am Indian, but I am white, which people don't get. So often I find myself struggling to explain my Indianness.

Regarding the idea of race, .. no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Race seems to embody a fact as simple and as obvious as the noonday sun, but if that is so, why the endless wrangling about the idea and the facts of race. What is a race? How can it be recognized? Who constitute the several races?.

Also because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I'm half of whatever they are.

I'm half English - and it has been highlighted by people who tell me that I'm not Asian enough.

I am a black woman, and of course, that's who I'm going to be playing, but I'm also biracial, and that's a different side of the experience.

As I got older, I realised that people saw me as other things - sometimes Korean, sometimes Japanese, sometimes just Asian. When my family moved to a more affluent white neighbourhood, I started to see myself as 'other', this amorphous category. I didn't even know what 'not other' was, but I knew I wasn't it; I wasn't what was normal.