Zoey Tur Quotes

People would write me hate letters. How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.

My work has always been controversial within certain segments of the Asian-American community. This is a community that is generally not represented well at all on the stage, in the media, etc. So on those few occasions when something comes along, everybody feels obligated to make sure that it represents his own point of view.

People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.

I've never been more aware of my Asianness and femaleness than working in Hollywood.

Being an openly gay black man, unfortunately I've had experiences working with individuals who've tried to exploit my blackness or my gayness in a way that doesn't make me feel comfortable, or they try to manipulate me into being a caricature of myself.

Whatever a 'superior' group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an 'inferior' group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'stronger' than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'weaker.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

I'm not a fan of identity politics.

The instant people specialize, it's in their interest to dehumanize the people their specialized function operates upon.

I'm not a big fan of identity politics and sort of picking one thing and defining yourself with it.

Watching 'Girls,' it was really angering for me at first, because I really had spent decades hiding unlikable, unattractive Jewish girls in likable, attractive, non-Jewish actors and characters.

Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.

Like one of any minority, I have experienced prejudice.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Those who have been outspoken in advocating human rights during these last forty years, have themselves grabbed the most fundamental of human rights from the people of the Third-World countries.

And the whole thing is that you're treated like a step-child. Here it was down here, everything in the black, because they were stealing, basically. Stealing from us old country boys down here.

Two words guided the making of 'Babel' for me: 'dignity' and 'compassion.' These things are normally forgotten in the making of a lot of films. Normally there is not dignity because the poor and dispossessed in a place like Morocco are portrayed as mere victims, or the Japanese are portrayed as cartoon figures with no humanity.

I don't hate nobody. I hate certain conditions that are inflicted upon the people - and they're helpless with it.

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.