Lester Holt Quotes

I just get so fed up with seeing the same things written about me. If I see the words 'ice queen' attached to me, I feel like banging my head against the wall. There's this perception that I can only be in a film if I have a glass of champagne in my hand and a stately home in the background.

Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting.

People just decided I was an R&B artist because I'm black.

By virtue of their being regarded as something "exceptional," even by friends and well-wishers, Negroes of attainment and genius have been unfairly disassociated from the group, and group credit lost accordingly.

You can't get much whiter than me.

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

I've been the best player on every team that I played on, so if I can't be the poster child of your team, then what else is it? It's got to be a black-white issue. Every white player I know who's the best player on their team is the poster child of that team.

I think I'm going to be stereotyped forever, but I'm not scared of being stereotyped.

My identity is always at the forefront, and I also think that every article that is written about me refers to me as an Israeli architect.

I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

One of the things that I found very confronting in my early working life was that people thought I was some sensitive doe-eyed lovelorn boy, because they'd seen me do that a couple of times. What tends to happen is you get a run of similar roles.

I'm black because that's the way the world sees me.

Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps.

I got pigeonholed a bit. When I wanted to be an actress, I never wanted to be the kind of actress I became.

When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything.

Either we want to have segregation or integration. And if we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're black.

A black actor is perfect for 'Kojak.'

If the idea of separate human races is a mistake to begin with, then monoracial forms of identification are fictitious and counterproductive.

I've been socially deemed black in America, and this is a category that's been hurting my family for generations and that has also led to extraordinary cultural contributions that I'm very proud of, but it's not a real category and our society is damaged by insisting on it.

Most so-called 'black' people do not feel themselves at liberty to simply turn off or ignore their allotted racial designation, whether they would like to or not.

I had become a victim of people's perceptions. It's not just me, I think all actresses are.

You walk into a room and there's already judgment. You know, like football players can't act or you're going to come in and be stiff.

I find it particularly irritating, if I go to a games conference to speak about my work, that often it's presumed that I'm the marketing girl - that's annoying.

I am an actor. It's very unfair when people categorise and term me as a television actor or film actor.

The system of racial classification is fiction, and we need to thoughtfully evaluate whether perpetuating it rigidly or allowing fluidity across the spectrum best supports human rights and social justice.