Minority Voices Quotes

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.

When I speak, I don't speak for myself; I don't have the luxury of a Caucasian to be able to speak for myself. I speak for a whole community, and I represent so many different communities that that felt like a lot of pressure.

I hate white people writing for black people; it's so offensive. So we go out and look specifically for African-American voices.

I'm going to be a Republican who happens to be black - who will talk about issues that I'm passionate about.

In reality, there are tons of unrepresented voices that we don't see in comedy.

Republicans have always talked about having a big tent, but it doesn't do any good if the tent doesn't have any chairs in it. Bringing Latinos to the forefront, bringing women in is absolutely critical.

I guess you could say I've written a lot about one thing as a journalist. But I hardly ever saw it as exclusively about race. To my mind, it was more about telling stories of people who existed outside the mainstream's field of vision. Invisible people.

It's time for gay people to be in the industry and talking about their stories.

I feel like it's important for young African-American girls - and all people - to read books that tell our stories and watch movies that tell our stories and do the research on our own, too, because sometimes that's not being told, and we're not being seen and shown.

I tell my students based on my experiences in Hollywood, sure, you can always move to L.A. and try to work with the system, and people do that, but chances are if you want your story in film with characters of color, you will have to make that movie yourself. Find a way to make it yourself. Not just screenwriters, but also producers.

I do think, however, that there's a very diverse point of view in the African-American community. There's a lot of different voices that need to be heard. I don't claim and pretend to know the thoughts and opinions and ideas of all African-Americans.

I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.

I think many of the ideas that opened up in the '60s got implemented in the '70s and that certain minority voices that were not being heard in the '60s, like women and gay people, were being heard in the '70s. Black Civil Rights had also found its foothold, and those ideas were also very pertinent.

Black writers seldom get the opportunity to write superhero stories.

I realize there is a paucity of African-Americans in my position. Everywhere I go, people say, 'Don't mess this up. Don't forget about us.' You feel a tremendous responsibility, not to take the black side of things but to make sure that side gets heard, because if I don't do it, who's going to do it?

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror.

There are a lot of communities within the Asian Pacific Islander umbrella that are predominantly more working-class or lower class, and those stories haven't been told yet, so my hope is that we see the gamut of perspectives.

I'm Asian, and I'm an actress, and I've been doing this since I was a teenager, so if anyone understands the conversation about misrepresentation and underrepresentation, it's me. I live and breathe it; this is my life.

I don't necessarily believe there's a message in the fact that I'm an African-American Republican. I think there is a message that America as a whole, we are now awake. We are looking at a political construct and we're fairly disappointed. I think the message is no matter where you come from in this country, there is great potential.

A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere.

As the editor at the Village Voice, I always tried to find writers of colour.

Twitter needs to understand that just because they're the loudest, they're not the majority.

I just said let's get some poets on tv. And when they said that sounded unlikely, I made it worse. I said, no man, I want to put a bunch of black poets on stage, too. Some Latino poets who barely speak English and Asian poets who can't believe how discriminated against they are. It was luck nad being in the right place. I wasn't saying nothing somebody else wasn't saying but they wouldn't hear it from them.

I definitely have been approached and reached out to by a lot of young Asian American and Asian women, which has been really cool for me.