Edwidge Danticat Quotes

Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity

It is tragic that all Arabs—all Moslems—are stereotyped because of the actions of a few.

If you are black on television, you are probably going to be some kind of thug, gangster, or portrayed in a negative light. If you are some type of Muslim, you are going to be blowing stuff up. If you are Hispanic, you are going to be some type of gangbanger. I've felt like this for years.

I am a singer. You love me or hate me based on my music. If you are judging me based on my nationality and religion, you are a racist. This is very offensive. I cannot encourage that.

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.

Lots of people hate gay people. You can tell who they are because they start sentences with, “It's not like I hate gay people.”

When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me.

Don't let the actions of a few determine the way you feel about an entire group. Remember, not all German's were Nazis.

Labels applied to people of any race are inherently offensive.

If a man does something silly, people say, 'Isn't he silly?' If a woman does something silly, people say, 'Aren't women silly?

Prejudice marks a mental landmine.

One thing I do know, you can't change hatred by showing those people that they're wrong about us.

(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand.

If a foreign country doesn't look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.

If you are socially isolated, you are more vulnerable to stereotypes and myths; you won't have the opportunity to have conversations with someone who has a different social background than you.

I became stereotyped.

Because I had an accent, people had this impression that I was dumb.

I have been a victim of stereotypes. I come from Latin America and to some countries, we are considered 'losers,' drug traffickers, and that is not fair because that is generalizing.

Americans have almost been conditioned to believe that the majority of people who seek to do us harm are those of Muslim descent.

I am certainly not racist; I even like the British.

If someone's intimidated by me, that's something they have to deal with. When I walk down the streets of New York and an old woman grabs her purse when I pass by, I'm not going to give it a whole lot of energy because I'm not in the wrong. I'm a millionaire, and I'm not thinking about grabbing an old woman's purse.

It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black. So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.

I think any stereotyping is too much.

I was an aspiring astrophysicist, and that's how I defined myself, not by my skin color. People didn't treat me as someone with science ambitions. They treated me as someone they thought was going to mug them, or who was a shoplifter.