Teyonah Parris Quotes

I've done a handful of voiceover and on-camera jobs where I've been asked to 'be blacker.' That's code for sassier, more ghetto, more neck rolls and snaps.

It's only in acting where I've heard in auditions, 'Can you black it up a little bit? Can you make her a little bit more urban?' And it's just like, 'What?' I don't even know the word for that.

One thing that really bothers me is when a young black person speaks or leads a conversation, and afterward a white person says, 'You're really articulate.'

Every now and then I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me, and I experience racism. Things like not being buzzed into a store or sitting in first class on a plane and having someone ask to see my ticket four times.

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.

There's always someone who's going to interpret my material as racist, but it's not. Racism comes from intent and power. A racist will tell a joke about a group of people only when they're not in the room. I'll talk about a group of people only when they're in the room.

There remains a degree of anti-black intellectualism in entertainment. Middle and upper-middle class blacks have often been portrayed as buffoons in popular culture; witness the characters of Carlton Banks on 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' and Braxton P. Hartnabrig on 'The Jamie Foxx Show.'

I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet.

If you're white working with non-white people, you will be branded as a colonialist by some people, regardless of your efforts or intentions.

Schoolkids - black and white - would call me Kunta Kinte as a cuss. If ever my hair was particularly messy, if ever I looked scruffy at school, I would be called Kunta Kinte. My first impression was that it was bad to be African and bad to be associated with him.

I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.

It's barely OK for me to be dressed up as a black guy. But part of me kind of enjoys provoking people.

People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.

You face racism in small and large ways.

Here's the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it's put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don't call them a white film. I'm trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't move the story forward. It just kind of cryogenically freezes us in this old racial paradigm.

I have been in rooms with people arguing over a character that's not really fleshed out: that, just because the surname is Latino, that automatically means you have an accent.

Don Cornelius gave me an incredulous look regarding my accent. I lessened it; he gave a nod of approval. Instantly, I felt ashamed. I had made my first conscious effort not to sound ethnic.

We are in a diversity age. I talk about the lack of diversity for black Americans, but what about the Asian Americans? You don't see them very often. They have a show called 'Fresh off the Boat.' No one is talking about that show. I saw it, and I found that show completely offensive, but I'm not Asian American.

It's something that black men still go through to this day, which is women clutching their purses, hitting the lock button on store, or just basic attitudes. And even as a U.S. congressman, as a black man, it is very, very frustrating, and you build up an internal anger about it that you can't act on.

I've heard about productions where it still happens: yellow face, taping up the eyes. It's hard to talk about it in a constructive way.

I say it in the writers' room all the time: My black is not your black. What's terrifying is that, just the same way we've all accepted that normal is white, everybody seems to buy into the idea that there's only one way to be black or one way to be Hispanic. That's as damaging as anything else.

You gotta follow the white guys. Truly. They've got this thing wired. Too often, we live within their games, so why would you not study what works? Take away the bad stuff - because there's a lot - and use the savvy interesting stuff and figure out how they can apply. It's a good one for the ladies.

Most girls spend most of their time at school. If real change comes from hearing our voices, it has to start in school, but school is a place where black girls tend to experience microaggressions. Microaggressions are not always obvious, ugly, or terrible things, but they make you feel as though your voice does not matter.