Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American.

All the networks have always been willing to have ethnic people as the third or fourth lead or the best friend to the white person. But to actually let a black family or an Asian family carry a show, that's something where there hasn't really been a precedent set in terms of a real financial gain.

I want to see designers capitalize on a beauty that is not only white. I need them to stop acting like beautiful black and brown women do not exist.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's through the back door.

Statistics show that diversity in the media is pretty dismal. Critical voices from women and people of color are missing from many important conversations.

There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?

There really aren't any completely Asian people singing right now.

People are tired of mainstream media's limited and confined portrayal of people of color.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.

I want authenticity. And rarely do actors - more specifically, black actors - get a chance to be authentic on film and television.

The historical legacy of 'The Best American Poetry' is they've had very few editors who were not white. They've had very few instances where they've selected poems by non-white poets.

I knew nothing of American History because I didn't pay attention to American History in school. Because I did not see myself in American History in school.

Korean-Americans, Asian-Americans are so unbelievably underrepresented in the U.S. entertainment and media industries and I don't think we are given a real shot.

SXSW can feel very male, very straight, and very white, and though it's a great festival, when you have a film that's different, it's hard to find your place.

If I go to the museum and see white bodies, black bodies, Asian bodies, Latino bodies, then I will expect to see those things every time I go. That matters a lot.

Much of political decision-making concentrates power in the hands of those already inside the circle, who tend to be men. Excluding women may not be the intention, but when they are not invited into the room where decisions are made, you can see how it happens.

If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.

I think the stakes are always high when you're an artist of color - to get things right, to get things perfect and make everybody happy.

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.

The 'New York Times' is not reviewing books by non-white people.

There is a lot of talent and a lot of good things happening and coming from Molenbeek, but unfortunately, it has had to deal with a very, very long time of being ignored, really, and it was very easy, even in the neighbourhood where I grew up, to just fall off the grid, and nobody would notice it.

Having spent half my time at university studying English literature, I know from experience that reading lists often contain more white men than Jacob Rees-Mogg's last birthday party.