Teyonah Parris Quotes

It's really maddening out there for dark-skinned actresses in terms of the opportunities we get. There's just so much talent that is being overlooked.

This is an industry rife with racism, sexism and homophobia. It is so closely woven into the fabric of the business that we have become snowblind to the glaring injustices happening every day.

I remember once being told by a casting person, years ago, that I shouldn't pursue a career in the business because of the color of my skin. The fact that I remember it today means it stuck with me. I thought that was really stupid advice and advice nobody should ever give someone.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

My race and sex had a great deal more to do with what people believed I could do than with what I actually could do.

Injustice is either very blatant - you walk down the street and someone calls you a name; you don't get a job because of your gender or your skin color or your sexual preference - but injustice is also very subliminal.

All my life, I faced sexism and racism and then, when I hit 40, ageism.

It's kind of heartbreaking when I talk about it now, I still get very moved by the lack of opportunities that were available to myself and to the very few others who were Hispanic young actresses.

People are making a lot more noise about representation and diversity. But I think modeling is one of the professions where people can be kind of racist.

The basic premise of math is about efficiency. And when you've got racism, sexism, and bigotry, that's just standing in the way of efficiency in our own progress.

There's something not right with a person's soul when they judge another human being to be less adequate because of their gender or skin color.

The consequences for failure are very different if you're a woman or a person of color than they are if you're a guy. If you're a guy who makes a mistake, you get a second chance. Often, for those of us who are outsiders, we make a mistake, and that's the end of the conversation.

Sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many 'intelligent' systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to.

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.

Less racist now but it has been. I don't think it's been completely stamped out. There's a class element to it. And who's supposed to do what. You're very unlikely to get a gay grip.

We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can't headline a movie because black women don't translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it's everything that people don't see out there.

Sexism and racism and homophobia and classism are so naturalized. All these stereotypes make people think it's just normal that straight white men are getting all the breaks.

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

I was the first South Asian female to do comedy videos on YouTube. But at the same time, all races face their barriers, and I've learned through YouTube, if it's not race, it will be sexism, if it's not sexism, it will be homophobia. It will always be something, and all voices should be heard.

I'd be stupid not to take into consideration that there are certain things people will not consider me for because my name is Lopez. And I know I can do any kind of role. I don't want anybody to say, Oh, she can't pull this off. So those are barriers that you have to overcome.

Ageism is as odious as racism and sexism.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.

Racism, because it favors color over talent, is bad for business.