Sajid Javid Quotes

I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that's not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.

Crime is the number one problem in Russia.

At what point do the oppressed become the oppressors?

The Negro is essentially the child of the moment and his memory, both tribal and individual, is very short

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

My dad's from that generation like a lot of immigrants where he feels like if you come to this country, you pay this thing like the American dream tax: like you're going to endure some racism, and if it doesn't cost you your life, well hey, you lucked out. Pay it; there you go, Uncle Sam. I was born here, so I actually had the audacity of equality.

I grew up in a really horrible school system, but my parents did not let that define how we function. They gave me more work at home from them than I ever got from school. To learn about the history of myself and my people, and that armors me.

I am too conscious of being an American to accept public congratulation with good grace or to welcome it except as an occasion for expressing openly a shame which many Americans feel, day after day, helplessly and in silence.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

To try and to pretend that there's no difference between where we come from is so dumb.

It will be hard to convince people that their welfare is safe in the hands of a federal government when they feel themselves the victims of unjust sectional discrimination.

I was very conscious of the world being this very crazed place that demanded explanation. I didn't see a whole lot of people who looked like me doing it on television.

The destiny of the Latino community is interwoven with the destiny of the United States.

Racism is here and will always exist, but we can't use it as a crutch.

The argument for '12 Years a Slave' was that - yes, it's a beautiful film. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted. It's a real story, and these stories should be told. The problem is, if they're the only stories being told, then it makes Americans of African descent - it puts them into that victim category. And that was my problem with the movie.

In America, aren't we all supposed to see beyond class, see beyond ethnicity? Are all these lines drawn to set us apart and lock us into groups?

One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves.

To me, it's 2016 about to be 2017. I can't believe there's still a racism factor.

I don't think I know a single person who's a minority who hasn't experienced some form of discrimination at one time or another.

Homophobia, racism, and sexism are all rooted in the same oppression that causes a group of people to internalize the oppression they've experienced and then continue the cycle of abuse. Simply put, hurt people hurt people.

As a son of Jamaican immigrants whose father cut sugarcane as a contract farm worker for over a decade and whose mother was a cook who fed those migrant workers out in the fields, the odds have always been against me growing up in rural South Bay, Fla.

'Atlanta' is really trying to put that out there: these are just the lives of these people in this city, and this city is its own breathing, living thing, too. So how do you navigate through life, especially with dreams and aspirations in a world that tells you that you don't deserve to have them.

When it comes to gang-based child exploitation, it is self-evident to anyone who cares to look that if you look at all the recent high-profile cases, there is a high proportion of men that are of Pakistani heritage.

When you get frisked by the police at the age of 10, and they empty your schoolbag out in the street and kick your books around and calling you names because of where you live, you just get an anger towards everyone who is outside of your neighborhood.

I'm going to make my own 'Trapped In The Closet' one day, about a black kid growing up in the hood.