Issa Rae Quotes

There's so many, 'no, black people aren't like that' barriers in mainstream media.

I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

You never hear about a pit bull doing anything good in the media. And they have a stigma to them... and, in many ways, pit bulls are like young African-American males. Whenever you see us in the news, it's for getting shot and killed or shooting and killing somebody - for being a stereotype.

Mainstream media has convinced people that black people aren't relatable. So when a Jewish person comes up to me and is all, 'Oh man, I love that one scene from Episode 3, I watch it over and over again,' I'm so happy. Because that's what I want.

I've given up on being accurately portrayed in the media.

Mainstream media's representation, or its guerrilla decontextualization, of black men's lives in particular can set the stage for erroneous assumptions capable of damaging an individual or a nation.

What is blackness? Is it the way you talk? Do you got to say, 'Dey this, dey dat.' Or the way you dress? Or is it the forgiving of certain things? What is black enough?

I think lot of Muslims have gotten fatigued by the way Muslim characters, even 'positive' ones, are portrayed in the media.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they're looting, if you see a white family it says they're looking for food.

Mass media over-represents persons of color in negative ways, especially as criminals, relative to the share of crime actually done by such persons.

When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.

The farther away you writers stay, the better I like it. You know why? Because you're trying to create a bad image of me... you do it because I'm black and Puerto Rican, but I'm proud to be Puerto Rican.

There are so many stereotypes of how you have to be as a black man, growing up in the community as a man.

In mainstream media, everything gets turned into a stereotype of ourselves.

In the press, there's this desire for the black audience to be this monolithic thing that always responds to the same stars. That's a really reductive way of looking at the black audience.

I had talked to my agent a lot over the years about not being interested in stereotypical "black films" [because] I didn't like the way they were representing black people over and over and over again in the same way.

The coverage [of crimes] is different. It's less angry when white [athletes] are involved, less accusatory, less judgemental. I see that in the pieces that are written and reported. At times it bothers me to the point that I just stop reading...just stop.

In movies and television shows, there has never been a really good Chinese lead. So often the Chinese look like they are very scared and shy.

There's this responsibility you feel to present a certain thing that kind of respectability politics. I think that became the only accepted way of defining black culture. I started to become too aware of 'How does this look?' instead of 'Who are these characters?'

I am not the 'Count' that has been portrayed in the media.

I've done a handful of voiceover and on-camera jobs where I've been asked to 'be blacker.' That's code for sassier, more ghetto, more neck rolls and snaps.

On TV, as in life, white folks are allowed to make mistakes, but usually, black people aren't.

As a black woman, I feel like I have a unique experience that we don't often see in media portrayals of the South.