Cheech Marin Quotes

If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.

To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.

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

What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It's self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like.

If you are black on television, you are probably going to be some kind of thug, gangster, or portrayed in a negative light. If you are some type of Muslim, you are going to be blowing stuff up. If you are Hispanic, you are going to be some type of gangbanger. I've felt like this for years.

I feel like I'm put in a position where I have to engage with what people bring to my work, which is an expectation for me to talk about race because it's not normal for a black writer to be writing in the theatre.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to.

People have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world, I don't care where it is, when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.

I do have a Mexican accent, but that doesn't mean that I'm a Latin vamp.

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize.

Yeah, I'm sure there are stereotypes of Asian people.

Your not black enough. If you are black, all you have to do is wear a dashiki and pump your fist, and you’ll get all the money you want.

If you're in a business where Latinos only play Indian maidens and what I call 'Conchita Lolita' parts - the little fiery spitfires - you do what you have to do.

Describing someone as quirky is a way of erasing them. What does it even mean? In so many interviews over the years, that's how I'm described. It doesn't sit comfortably with me.

I don't want to go and play a cliched Indian girl.

I'm Asian, so they assumed I'm not an American and that I come from Japan. Restaurants would refuse to serve me, and places would refuse to give you a haircut.

I've heard about productions where it still happens: yellow face, taping up the eyes. It's hard to talk about it in a constructive way.

Being the house ethnic was destroying my life and my sense of myself, because I had been consigned to play every dusky maiden you have ever seen in your life in movies.

If black artists can win major commissions and international acclaim, why do we assume that to be black is always to be marginal, or in need of special support? We have to recognize how diversity initiatives can make black artists feel ghettoized and, as some cultural commentators have argued, bear 'the burden of representation.'

Being a Filipino actor in Hollywood, the most frustrating part of landing roles in Hollywood is definitely the limited roles available and the lack of diversity.

Black women are so very often stereotyped in pop culture.

One thing that really bothers me is when a young black person speaks or leads a conversation, and afterward a white person says, 'You're really articulate.'