Vic Mensa Quotes

My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.

You could say mixed-race Eurasians have the exact same struggles as a character like Rachel Chu has had: not feeling at home in supposedly their motherland; not being white enough; not being Asian enough.

I am the daughter of a Chicana and anglo. I think most days I am an embarrassment to both groups. I sometimes hate the white in me so viciously that I long to forget the commitment my skin has imposed upon my life.

I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.

Growing up as an Asian American in this society, there were a lot of times where you feel isolated or out of place as an Asian. And growing up in White America, that's absolutely my experience. And I think that's why I got into acting because I wanted to be anybody else but Asian.

I hated, when I was a kid, being told that 'Black people don't do that.' And the white kids at school didn't accept me because I was black, and the black kids in my neighborhood didn't accept me because they thought I thought I was white.

When I was growing up, I always felt a bit like I didn't quite fit in, a feeling that perhaps still lingers in the background to this very day. I was the small brown girl in the big white suburb.

Black folk who don't realize I'm mixed will treat me like I'm some racist person, or when white people find out I'm black, they treat me with racism, and I don't feel like I belong or fit in anywhere.

I grew up basically in a predominantly, you know, white community and I was mixed but as a kid you don't know that. So I was always different, always stood out and people would always make fun of me.

I'm mixed race, and it's often hard for me to fit into period pieces.

I'm half English - and it has been highlighted by people who tell me that I'm not Asian enough.

So I was really excited when I came to America about meeting black people. But it was a huge culture shock, because I was rejected by the black community. They were like, 'You talk like a white girl.' People would call me an Oreo. All I wanted was acceptance.

Growing up, I was confused about my identity: I felt like I wasn't black enough to be black, but not white enough to be white.

At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably, the tragic mulatto can't fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I'm reading, and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, I think I'm in literature,' but my life was never like that.

I wish I'd been a mixed infant.

I do remember being teased by my cousins on my mom's side for not being black enough. And then I'd spend the summer with my dad and be sent to all white summer camps where I was 'that black girl.'

I'm a suspicious mulatto, which means I'm too black to be white and too white to be doing it right.

I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white.

I never fit in. Everyone knew my dad was Indian. I was half-Indian.

I was one of the only people of color at my grade school and also my high school. It's weird recollecting on my childhood, I think, because my brothers are all white. We all share the same father but different mothers. I guess I kind of associated white, but I was occasionally reminded in a really negative way that I wasn't.

What after all am I. Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates black and white in America.

Our vulnerability is that both blacks and whites can use our impossible racial authenticity against us. Both races can throw up our mixed background to challenge our authority to speak.

Growing up I definitely, definitely had a bunch of things of, 'Um, am I black enough?' - and I guess specifically, 'Am I German enough?' Why are we measuring blackness?

People are like, 'Was it hard growing up mixed?' 'Did you not fit in?' and I'm like, 'No? What? That's the dumbest question ever.'

I was at all-white schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade, so I wanted to feel what it was like just to be me and not, like, Black Amy.