Jodie Turner-Smith Quotes

Out of the race must come its own thinkers and writers. Authors belonging to the white race have written good books, for which I am deeply grateful, but it seems to be almost impossible for a white man to put himself completely in our place. No man can feel the iron which enters another man's soul.

Only a straight white person would have no concept of what visibility is. They've never contended with anything but visibility.

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

I had this stereotypical view that black people apart from me probably threw stones and lived in huts.

Because, if I'm honest, people in the white world might be appalled, but in the black world, they're making myths out of me. And I know that ain't the life.

As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator.

Just because we have exotic last names or darker faces, our politics are assumed to be radical. But that is simply not the case.

Nobody calls on black women to find out what they're thinking about because we're always part of somebody else's agenda.

I always think - when I get mad, and people say, 'Don't be the angry black woman' - it's like, well, why not? There's so much to be angry about.

Sometimes, you feel like, 'Am I going to be upset about this as a black person or as a woman first? Or am I gonna be both?' Because some things inherently affect black women; some things affect you as a woman and not a black person; and some things just affect you as a black person.

We live in a world that does not recognize virtually anyone outside of the white male or the beautiful white woman who has to be an object of desire and affection.

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.

If you're anything other than a white, cisgender, able-bodied dude, people are going to project narratives, imagery, and context onto you that you might not necessarily see for yourself.

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

Especially when you're queer and you're a person of color, you're so used to being the token on set. Inevitably you have to answer dumb questions from someone. You're the 'other.'

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

I don't know a single black girl who's carefree because it ain't easy being a girl of color, period. God, I wish we were carefree.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

Even in reality shows, how they look at black women like they're the monsters - snatching wigs, and weaves and wigs, weaves and wigs, basically, and throwing water and stuff. That's how people see us often, as we are the enemies of things. I wanted to change that because that's not a good example.

As a black woman, I feel like I have a unique experience that we don't often see in media portrayals of the South.

My work is often a therapy for myself - a working out of these issues as a black woman. And a way of allowing other black women to work through this kind of stigmatization as they look through the images and feel how distorted or contorted they might be in the public eye.

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members but often fail to represent them.

I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible.

People have accused me of bleaching my skin, of getting a nose job. They squint at my mom, like, 'I didn't know Wendy was Asian.' I am black all day, honey pie. I am black and very proud.

The great thing about being a standard-issue, straight white person is you have so much time. Gay people, people of color, we have less time! We have to be a living Learning Annex to everybody. We don't have time to master hobbies like skipping rocks along lakes.