Pam Grier Quotes

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.

I've lived 16, 17 years of my life in Asia, and that's most of my life. I was born in Asia - I've lived cultures that are synonymous with Asian culture - but it's still not Asian enough for some people.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

My children don't look Hispanic.

When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

I lived in an all-black neighborhood, followed by an all-white one, and other kids in the always called me Mexican in both neighborhoods.

I looked real Neanderthal. I could have been Mexican, I could have been black; I could have been anything.

There are some Chicanos who don't want to be Chicanos - they want to be Mexican-American, Hispanic, or even Spanish.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, 'We're black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we're all brought up differently.'

In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

Ethnicity is not a science. It’s how people perceive it.

This form is only an application for a marriage license and yet it asks for my color. I looked at my arm and wrote “pink”, Your assistant then said that I have to pick from White, Brown, Black, Yellow or Red. The form says I answer under penalty of perjury, so I want to tell the truth, but the city of New York must explain to me how I tell what color I am. I am a trained artist and I can assure you that my skin color is not a white. My ancestors came from Germany and the yellow Mongols and Huns raped and pillaged there, not to mention the blacks from North Africa. So what is the test a citizen should use to determine color if not pigment?

It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong. We all differ visibly in the color of our skin.

So-called racial characteristics are not really racial at all but are due to the historical experiences of the communities in question.

I think the first time 'white' was used was in the 1600s. Generally, we were described by where we came from... All of a sudden, this word 'white' came through, and now everyone is going for their own sense of power... to figure out who's on top.

When you are in America, at least for me, as an immigrant, I try to be as Americanized as I could. I just want to be an actor, I don't just want to be an Asian actor necessarily.

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn't identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.

The so called white races are really pinko-grey.

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves.

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'