James Welch Quotes

I am not a Hollywood Jew and I won't ever be one.

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

I don't consider myself an Iranian comedian; I consider myself a comedian who happens to be of Iranian descent.

I don't call myself Latin, I call myself Puerto Rican.

I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to put that out there so blatantly, so that before you listen to me you know that I'm Asian. But I thought it was sort of cool to embrace the Korean half of me, which I love.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

I should not have to prove my ethnicity to anyone. I know who I am.

I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don't consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

One of the things that I am happy about in my life as an artist is that I am not considered a Hispanic artist.

I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.

I've got the fighting Irish, and Puerto Ricans are some of the best fighters in the world. I'm proud of who I am, but it doesn't define me as a person.

I'm comfortable, culturally I'm American, my perspectives are American, but from an aesthetic perspective do other people look at me and think that I'm American?

I don't really know what feeling Japanese or Haitian or American is supposed to feel like. I just feel like me.

I'm not the Asian kid of 'Riverdale;' I'm Reggie, and I just happen to be Chinese.

I have always thought of myself as being Northern Irish because that's what I am.

I want to represent my color and ethnicity. To be proud of our heritages is really cool.

I really just prefer to be exactly who I am, and black is really the closest race and cultural category that represents the essence of who I am.

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.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'