Eartha Kitt Quotes

As a gay Jewish white South African, I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are, what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are.

Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.

We come from a very mixed family. We're a bunch of different races, my family. So it's very normal for us. I don't know why we're accepted. Are all of us accepted or just me?

I am an American. Black. Conservative. I don't use African-American, because I'm American, I'm black and I'm conservative. I don't like people trying to label me. African- American is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people.

I lived in London for a long time, and that's a pretty white town. In Toronto, I just ended up in this circle of indie rock kids who happened to be white, too... Really, it was just when I started getting out there and meeting more people and seeing more fans that I went, 'Oh, actually, I'm not white.'

I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.

I consider myself a human being, a Christian, a father, a husband, so many things, before being a black person.

I've always been multi-cultural myself. I'm not black and I'm not white and I'm not pink and I'm not green. Eartha Kitt has no color, and that is how barriers are broken.

I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want.

A [minority or ethnic] group is best defined as a dynamic whole based on inter-dependence rather than on similarity.

I have two passports because I have to have at least one, and I really don't know how I define myself. And I feel that as I get older, I feel very fortunate to have, on paper, a dual nationality.

I'm made up of immigrant stock. I went to a primary school in London. I grew up eating Spangles, why shouldn't I be as well placed to speak for Londoners as anyone else?

I am more than a black guy. I am a person, I'm storyteller, I'm a son, I'm a friend, so I am all those things, so it is frustrating, to a degree, to be limited by other people's perceptions of me, but at the same time, it is true that I am a black guy, and, you know, it's like I'm rooted in but not bound by.

You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you're never going to make everybody happy.

Let me be abundantly clear: I am black, and I am a woman, and I embrace both of those facts.

As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other.

I was an athlete, so I hung out with the jocks. I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I was also into theater, so I hung out with the misfits... So I was always in different groups, and those groups never quite overlapped. The racial part of it was just another one of those groups, in one sense.

I've had lots of people say, 'Oh, Franchesca's content is just for white people.' But I try to talk about identity in a way that's accessible to lots of people and is not a pointed finger.

This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

Nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish... being different from everyone else just made me a lot stronger.

I myself identify as British-Nigerian, and I'm also gay, and I'm also a young adult in London making music. All of things can co-exist as one.

I am a woman, and I am Jewish; I'm a film-maker, and I'm a writer, so you cannot just put me in one box.

I don't know that I constantly think about being a black woman.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

Some black filmmakers will say, "I don't want to be considered a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker." I don't think that. I'm a black woman filmmaker.