Khandi Alexander Quotes

I walk into a room, there's one or two black women. There aren't that many because the pipeline of talent just isn't there.

Lot of the scripts I've been in with other non-white actors haven't been great. Lot of non-white actors ain't all that great.

The sad reality of it is, as black artists in the industry, we still have to work 10 times harder to get our voices out there.

I've always tried to fight against, 'Oh, who's that small funny actress? Let's get her.'

I learned early that I had to work harder than the white kids and harder than the boys.

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

The deals that were made for Black artists at that time were not the deals that were made for white artists.

I never wanted to be a bombshell; I wanted to be an actor. I would much prefer to be a woman than a man, but if I was a dude, maybe I'd have Johnny Depp's island because women in this industry after a certain age definitely don't get to do 'Pirates of the Caribbean.'

In 1968, the situation at Harvard was not one of which we can be proud. In that year, the proportion of minority persons in salary and wage positions was approximately 3 per cent. Virtually no minority workers were employed on Harvard construction projects.

I don't feel that I was often compartmentalized as an African-American actor, yet I am fully aware of the plight that actors, directors and producers of color face in our industry. I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others while acknowledging that we are not playing on a level playing field.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

Too often, customary practices and discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, social status, or class are the root sources of pervasive inequality in many countries.

I had a meeting a while back with a big group of women - actors and producers and writers - who are all ethnic minorities and we just aired what we thought was happening and why, and someone said that, as a black or mixed race actress, you feel like you're renting space instead of carving out a career. But I'm just going to get on with it.

Really, it hasn't changed for female comics; it's still hard for females to really enter the game.

It's about very talented writers, directors, producers, and actors being in a position for their projects to be supported, but there's just not enough black projects being made.

We remain a highly unequal society in which poverty and prosperity are still defined by race as well as gender.

Any comedic roles that I've gone out for usually end up going to a white woman or a gay man instead.

To not see black or Latina women as famous in my industry is crazy! I have to talk about it.

Diversity in the industry is very lacking, and equal opportunity comes very far and few between for people of color.

In the industry, artists of of color struggle the most. Caucasian artists have really solidified themselves in the industry, and with African Americans now we see directors and producers who vow to only produce work that shines a light on African American artists. But everybody in the middle gets lost.

Minorities often feel like they are on the outside looking in when it comes to the Valley and tech start-ups in general.

The white woman has never had the co-equal status that the African woman has had.

The African-American community, the community within the inner cities has been so badly treated.

We would never throw up our hands and say to those white boys - well, too bad, if you had just stayed away from marijuana or not dealt dope to your friends when you were 18 you wouldn't be serving a life sentence in prison right now. You wouldn't be locked out of jobs, unable to even get work at McDonalds. No, instead we'd say, "What's wrong with us as a nation that we would condemn so many of our young men to a life of poverty, exclusion, and scorn simply because they made a few mistakes in their youth?".

I went to the graduation the other night of my first great grandchild - he's 21 or 22; and right at the graduation I looked, and 92 percent of those who graduated at the University of Illinois were females. Where can a Black female, who are now the lawyers, the engineers; they are the ones graduating with top degrees; where will they find in a Black male a counterpart that is equal to them? We are filling the jails, we are filling the prisons.