Lizz Wright Quotes

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

Who does get to claim Americanness? You know, my brother was born in this country. And is he seen as American? So, I mean, it brings up a lot of interesting questions.

The only part of my mother's experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy.

I adopted England as least as much as England adopted me.

I value what I learned from being cast in the margins and what that felt like.

There are people who get to be three-dimensional humans in the United States, and there are people who do not.

When people doubt your right to be somewhere, the responsibility falls on you to prove over and over again that you deserve to be there.

I know that for me, a lot of people will look at me and they'll think 'Somali' or 'outsider' instead of 'Minnesota.'

Most of the discrimination I have encountered centered on the view that I am not a part of this great nation, even though I grew up in Ohio, graduated from law school in Washington, D.C., and received my commission in the U.S. Air Force in 1991.

As a woman, I have no country

As to whether Marcos is gay: Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'

Never, ever, have I felt really accepted in Hollywood.

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.

Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's through the back door.

White Americans today don't know what in the world to do because when they put us behind them, that's where they made their mistake... they put us behind them, and we watched every move they made.

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

People who don't fit the mold are treated differently than those who do.

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

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.

Sometimes black people really want to hold onto our oppression - 'This is ours! This belongs to us.' You can't just talk about equality for somebody else. Let's pass it on. Let's pass it on to somebody else. At the end of the day, it is all about inequality.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

The indigenous peoples never had, and still do not have, the place that they should have occupied in the progress and benefits of science and technology, although they represented an important basis for this development.

I am not an African. I am an American.