Richard Rodriguez Quotes

I am a black male who grew up in the inner city of Atlanta and no one ever followed me in a mall. I don't recall any doors clicking when I crossed the street. And I never had anyone clutching their handbag when I got on an elevator. I guess having two awesome parents who taught me to be a respectful young man paid dividends.

We knew then what we know now; only exemplary blacks are acceptable.

I am definitely a person of color.

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

I'm not sure if being Chinese really helped, but I do think that if a non-Asian had written a book called 'Crazy Rich Asians,' they might not have been looked upon so kindly.

I've always called myself a different shade of Brown.

I'm black and white, so either, sometimes, you're not considered by the breakdown of the script: you're not 'black enough' for this role. Or you're not 'white enough' for this role. Or, like, looking up to people, who do I identify with? And not seeing Barbies that maybe look like me.

I actually spoke to one of the heads of a studio, and he said I confuse middle America. Basically, when they see a black person, they see athlete, they see rapper, or they see criminal or something like that. And then when they hear a British accent, they hear posh, so they hear lawyer or doctor.

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.

I'm not a token black guy.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

When I got into Stanford in high school, I had some friends from school who told me that I just got in because I was black and whatnot.

I don't often get Indian girl roles because I'm 'not Indian enough.' Which is true - I'm from Texas.

While I was able to pass as white as soon as I came to America, this was not really possible while I was growing up, as it was pretty obvious that I wasn't 'all German.' So my privilege was that in America, I could conveniently withhold one of my bloodlines and avoid racism and discrimination. That is not a privilege most people of color have.

When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for fiction writing, I felt both coveted and hated. My white classmates never failed to remind me that I was more fortunate than they were at this particular juncture in American literature.

Race is a universal flaw in humanity. So yes, I've been in many situations where I've felt like the outsider because of the color of my skin.

And you're not the kind of girl I want." Surely he couldn't mean the fact that I was Mexican. From what I knew of Hardy, there wasn't a bit of prejudice in him. He never used racist words, never looked down on someone for things they couldn't help. "What kind do you want?" I asked with difficulty. "Someone I can leave without looking back.

But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target

You are not born racist. You are born into a racist society. And like anything else, if you can learn it, you can unlearn it. But some people choose not to unlearn it, because they're afraid they'll lose power if they share with other people. We are afraid of sharing power. That's what it's all about.

I very much dislike the word "race," and I never use it. I use the word "racist." Race is not a fact. There is only one race: human. Skin color is less than 2 percent of the DNA.

I have compromised down the line. I've disliked it intensely in the old days when you were trying to talk race relations and they would not allow you to talk about the legitimacies of race relations. In the old days, you didn't talk about black, you talked about Eskimo or American Indian, and the American Indian was assumed not to be a problem area.

I've never bothered about my color.

It's interesting, gender versus race. I think people say that to women more: 'Oh, you're my favorite female.' They wouldn't say 'favorite black comic.'

If you're black, you can't just be ordinary. All successful black people are extraordinary.