Misty Copeland Quotes

We want to make tennis look like America when it comes to cultural backgrounds.

I want to bring awareness to the lack of diversity in ballet, and feel like that's a large part of my purpose.

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

I do worry because it takes all types to make our culture, to make our art. We need it to be available to all.

Do I feel that white directors have to tell only white stories? No. Do I feel that black filmmakers should only tell stories about black people? No. If we say that, then that means Asian people cannot write about anybody but Asians. I don't think a woman should only write about women.

If the writers all come from the same backgrounds, you are going to get the same sorts of characters. Get a broader variety of writers, and you get a bigger range of stories.

Making a movie with people of all different ethnicity, all different skin color and different backgrounds, meant that the movie can literally play all around the world. It's not just a blanket whitewash film like most Hollywood films tend to be.

People act like art is a white thing - or not for people of colour - when, really, so much culture and art comes from people of colour. I want everyone to get into what I am doing. So sometimes I don't like to work just in an art context because it feels like a lot of people aren't going to see it. I like it to be a part of everyday life.

'Hamilton' just asks us all to go a little bit deeper: whether you're a hip-hop fan seeing musical theater for the first time, or if you were thinking you were gonna see some reprise of 1776, and now it's this? And you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, these people aren't white!' It asks you just take a step and go a little deeper.

We agree that there is a problem in the sketch and improv community where, in general, there should be more interest from a more diverse sampling of our society. That is precisely why we do have diversity scholarships and why we've put together a diversity program to try to figure this problem out.

I think it's really important that we have diversity - whether it's different languages, cultures - be involved in film and in the arts.

It's great we have a female Thor. It's great we have a black Captain America. But those are just optics; it's optics of change... Unless you have the structural diversity, the structural change behind the scenes - more women, more people of color actually calling the shots and editing these books - those optics won't last.

I liked the fact that there were so many different representations of black women and black men in the movie. It wasn't like we all had the same agenda.

All the colleges I played, most of the colleges, they were white.

If the United States is the melting pot of the world, you need entertainment - you need visuals that represent that.

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

I think I would like to see more roles for South Asian performers that are more inclusive and part of the American Diaspora, the American tapestry, perhaps the way that African American and Hispanic roles have developed.

I was the only one at stage school who wasn't white.

Artists don't really want to be marginalized. They believe that everybody should be able to appreciate the experience that an artist gives them, an experience that connects us to each other in a deep way.

Cultivating more leaders who reflect our heterogeneous society depends on universities' transparent use of race as one of many factors in an admissions process that is accessible to all.

Shows like 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends,' they have, like, one or two damn characters throughout the whole series that are minorities.

We need more people working in the publishing industry itself who are people of colour.

America is grappling with cultural diversity, and I just want to put a show on that represents the world in which I live.

There are all kinds of under-represented groups in the literary establishment.

I hope to see more programming, more shows, more actors of mixed ethnicity, more young kids of mixed ethnicity choosing to be in the entertainment industry.