Intersectional Identity Quotes

I've turned the annoying questions that white people ask into a career, so I understand that's where I live.

I'm a multi-racial person - I'm black and white - and growing up in North Carolina, I've dealt with a lot of racism. Growing up as a kid, I've seen it. I've been through it in many forms and fashions.

If a CEO takes an interest in you and he happens to be an Asian man, then that's great, but as an African-American woman, you want to make sure that if the executive vice-president of the company is an African-American woman that you get to know her.

What about Hong Chau? In typical supporting-part fashion, she shows up halfway through 'Downsizing,' already shrunk, an imperious Vietnamese house cleaner with a limp and sharp angles. The movie's satirical cleverness upstages its rage; then Ms. Chau proves she's capable of managing both.

I do believe, as a person of color, the disparities are great. A lot of the roles that were sent to me were 'Gangbanger No. 1.' And when a role did come up that I felt carried and represented my community in the best ways, I wasn't the only one that knew it existed. So I'd have to compete.

As a person of color, as a woman, as a body moving through this particular space in time, I realize the streets of New York tell the story of resistance, an African-American history of brilliance and beauty that, even in its most brutal moments, did not - could not - kill our resilient and powerful spirit.

As an activist, organizer, Palestinian, and a Muslim-American woman, I have faced many obstacles in the industry I work in. I often have to fight for my seat and representation for the communities I represent.

Especially for young POC, when we enter majority-white spaces, we feel the need to assimilate, to blend in, to prove ourselves. I don't think we discuss it enough.

I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor - and it's one that I enjoy extremely.

I always figured I would live long enough to see a black president. The movies predicted it. Usually, Morgan Freeman.

I think unless we have an honest conversation about race and identity in this country, we're never going to get anywhere.

Paul Robeson was an athlete, Rutgers valedictorian, lawyer, writer, actor in movies and plays, great voice - a black male doing it all, back when some people thought he shouldn't. One reason I do all the things I do is to break stereotypes that people can only do certain things.

If Obama's enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country's first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop's foundational generation.

Could it be that my circle is largely black and that it is why I am influential in black circles but not in white circles?

It's great to go to work and your boss is a black man, one of your peers, you know?

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they're being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I'm black. I tell them, 'Don't stop now. If I shot somebody you'd mention it.'

I want all types of people to look at my work and see themselves, just like I watch a Reese Witherspoon movie as a black woman and can empathize with her because we have had to internalize whiteness in that way to survive.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

Traditionally, I have no right to talk about race. I'm white; I didn't grow up in an all-black neighborhood. But the license I see for myself is I'm a member of the world.

I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.

I have had issues in the past with the characters and the limitations of the characters and the structure of the narratives given to me as a woman of color.

One of my closest friends was a half-black, half-Jewish girl. Another good friend had a shaved head... but I was also friends with jocks. I was a 'floater,' I guess you could say.

I'm a woman and a lesbian and a feminist and a Jew and so many other things, and those identities are a source of pride and strength for me.

As a black manager, somebody talking in good terms about me I don't think can be a bad thing.

That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.