Stephan James Quotes

Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable.

They can't just tell everybody else to ignore all the other meanings that it's accrued..

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

Why is it appropriate for the President to use a racial slur in any context?

It's important to understand you can't remove the historical context of racially charged stereotypes or slurs as much as we like to pretend that we can.

What we're trying to do is take these words and soften them. I'm an African-American comic. I use the b-word in my act.

I'd rather be called a N*gger than a Slave.

Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing. Niggas is the ones with gold ropes,hanging out at clubs.

Looks like somebody's got jungle fever.' 'That's not even the right kind of racist.

I'm in the middle of an existential crisis in how I approach comedy about these big issues. I sometimes find, when I get drawn on the subject of race, it's too close to home for me and I can't articulate what I'm trying to get across.

I don't see how I ever could have thought that having an all-white crew for a special about race would be OK.

The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design.

I believe that sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity is important, and nuanced, even more so when it intersects with the issue of free speech.

Why I talked about political correctness: the colonial is now such a major taboo that any achievement of the colonial period, or any generosity implied in colonialism, is again fundamentally neglected or fundamentally not recognised. That's crazy, because history is a series of layers, and you cannot say, "This layer I support and this layer I cancel." History is history and you cannot retrospectively manipulate it.

Faggot never meant "gay" when I was a kid. You kind of knew that you could call a gay person faggot if you were ignorant, but nobody ever called someone a faggot if they were gay.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Or, as it's known to Native Americans - Sarcastic You're Welcomesgiving.

I don't speak cockney and I don't pretend to come from that part of the world. For the longest time the English, like the Beatles and so on sounded American. "She loves you yeah yeah yeah!" All of the sudden you sound American. It doesn't work that way with Americans who try to sing English. It's not convincing. If I say "Footy" and "tele" and "Brissy" and "Sydney" and "Simmo" it's not convincing.

Do you think we care about the feelings of Native Americans when we celebrate Columbus Day? That's the day that the white man discovered a land where Indians had been living for a few thousand years.

"It looks as though it was put in by an Indian." He later backtracked: "I meant to say cowboys."

I love doing things that are titillating. I think race can be very funny, and I think I'm very comfortable discussing it and bringing it up.

I saw The Revenant, and they were calling Native Americans "tree niggers," and that is not cool.

You may find somebody refreshing until they drop the N-word on you and then you're no longer feeling refreshed, you're just feeling offended. And where we draw that line as a society is sort of akin to what the Supreme Court said on pornography, you know, you know it when you see it. And it's different for each person.

I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected

Words are words, but the way an actor says them, the way it's framed, puts you either in the world that looks a lot like ours or one that doesn't seem a lot like ours, one that can be farcical or one that can't.

Dee Dee Dee dosen't mean mentally retarded. It means stupid. This song goes out to all the stupid people out there. Your gonna find this song hilarious, and you don't even know it's about you.