Tempestt Bledsoe Quotes

People don't realize how black people, minorities, women as well, all their lives, they have had to make the effort to understand everybody else. All my life, I've known American culture very well. I probably know American literature more than the average American.

I can't believe that I'm sitting in meetings with Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Annette Bening. I want to take on that responsibility to represent all the Rogers out there who don't have a seat at the table. People of colour were not at the table, and now I am there, I want to change things.

Kids need to see their world reflected back to them.

Diversity on the bench is critical. As practitioners, you need judges who 'get it!' We need judges who understand what discrimination feels like. We need judges who understand what inequality feels like. We need judges who understand the subtleties of unfair treatment and who are willing to call it out when they see it!

'Twilight' is reaching so many people, and I think it's a really good step in the right direction for diversity and opening up doors.

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.

I have never wavered from my intention to advance the cause of diversity in new and more effective ways.

Diversifying our tech talent pool is an imperative for the tech sector. More diverse engineers and entrepreneurs will bring about a new type of innovation that Silicon Valley has yet to see.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

I felt that it was my mission to see to it that black talent had an opportunity to get national television exposure.

I'm not going to change the world overnight. It's one person at a time, and hopefully they're people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really, truly embrace colorblind casting.

I believe in diversity in front of and behind the camera.

My mom was concerned that us four little black girls have a really well-balanced life. She wanted us to be around people like us, but we also went to private school and traveled all the time. Now I fit in most places because I've been most places.

If fiction changes things, it's usually because it's a powerful way of exploring social issues. And it helps us to understand people who are different from us.

I'm a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist.

I haven't done a great deal of it but this was a chance to do more and bring it to that part of the business and even more so, but the fact that it was a black superhero was really the catalyst to me.

I wanted to have a body of work behind me before I wrote about racism.

Being able to travel and see the world really makes me appreciate the blessings in my life. There are so many people that will never get a chance to see some of the things that I've seen during my travels. I'll never take that for granted.

All the privileged can travel, see different worlds; not everyone can. I think it is important for people to have an interesting locale nearby.

… it is the great mass of people, particularly women, who do not often hear government questions discussed who would really enjoy and profit from these

It’s really important that the entire policymaking establishment understands the country they’re making policy abound sees it throughs the eyes of the people in it, not just through our eyes.

I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

That's very, very important to me, to give another narrative. And Netflix has not been afraid of doing that, as we see from the plethora of shows that they have, from British shows to American shows like 'Master of None,' which I've been very grateful to be on, too. Just giving platforms to people who haven't seen themselves on TV.

I think diversity is something that should be celebrated because it's who we are as a world, and little kids need to be able to turn on the TV and see real-world representations of themselves. It's very important.

I think the lesson is that when you give black voices a platform and the opportunity to tell our story, we will tell good stories just like anybody else.