Ethnic Expectations Quotes

My mother likes what I cook, but doesn't think it's French. My wife is Puerto Rican and Cuban, so I eat rice and beans. We have a place in Mexico, but people think I'm the quintessential French chef.

I don't think that because I am Hispanic I should therefore do Hispanic work.

I've never claimed myself to be a particularly Asian R&B singer. I'm R&B, pure and simple, regardless of my skin colour. Should that matter? I think not.

Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.

Your stereotypical L.A. Persian kids were not working at Sbarro pizza in the mall, but I was.

I've been told that I wasn't Latino enough, which was code for 'street' enough.

If I could rap, that would be a sensation, but I can't, you see, I'm just a Caucasian.

The strange thing about my life is that I came to America at about the time when racial attitudes were changing. This was a big help to me. Also, the people who were most cruel to me when I first came to America were black Americans. They made absolute fun of the way I talked, the way I dressed. I couldn't dance. The people who were most kind and loving to me were white people. So what can one make of that? Perhaps it was a coincidence that all the people who found me strange were black and all the people who didn't were white.

British people are surprised that I'm British!

It's pretty hard as an Asian rapper to not be put in a box. I do my best to avoid that.

I want to say that I can be Moroccan and speak about someone without speaking about his nationality. Because, you know, I have the feeling that when you come from Morocco, when you come from Afghanistan, when you come from Africa, Occidental people always wait for you to write a novel about identity.

Sometimes people who are Jewish are held to a higher standard which sometimes we take great pride in.

My background is from India, and I always get asked, 'When are you going to do an Indian film, a musical or Bollywood film?'

Some people wanted me to be the Latino quarterback. Some people wanted me to be the USC quarterback who happens to be Latino.

I've been asked far too often, 'Can you be blacker?' I've gotten done with auditions and heard, 'We're not going to go black with this character.'

Because my parents are Indian, everybody speaks Hindi to me, and I have no idea what they are saying.

There aren't a lot of Portuguese models, so everyone always expects me to be Brazilian because of my features, sometimes even American, as I have a slight American accent when I speak English.