Frank Deford Quotes

I didn't have a role model. My role model was Michael Jordan. Bad role model for an Indian dude... I didn't have anyone who looked like me. And by the time I was old enough to have what could have been a role model, they were my peers. Aziz Ansari is my peer. Kal Penn is my peer.

There are little Indian girls out there who look up to me, and I never want to belittle the honor of being an inspiration to them. But while I’m talking about why I’m so different, white male show runners get to talk about their art.

Do mainstream crowds want to watch a movie about good things happening in black neighborhoods? Do black audiences want to see a little girl doing something in a white world?

I've stayed away from doing 'urban film' because I just don't relate to the characters. I'm not going to take a role because I happen to have the same skin color.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

In the States I might be an Asian face, look different from everyone else in TV and in music, but in Korea I look like everybody else, in Asia I look like everybody else.

I knew there were calls for diversity in children's lit, but you always wonder as a person of color, how diverse is too diverse?

I remember the first time I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and saw a Kerry James Marshall painting with black bodies in it on a museum wall... It strengthened me on a cellular level.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

I will always be the first Latina Cinderella, so I always have that to take with me, and I'm very proud of that. I believe that it was a life-changing experience for me.

We always talk about how important representation is. It's so important to see someone that looks like you - whether you're African American, Asian, Indian or whatever your background is - doing incredible things. It's just motivation to go out there and do incredible things yourself.

I would say 'The Big Narstie Show' is the United Colours of Benetton; it's for everyone. But I would definitely say that it has a black appeal, because that's what I am.

I definitely am not white.

Just speaking for myself, when I'm complimented for being Vietnamese-American in television - the only one - that doesn't make me feel happy, that makes me feel really lonely, actually.

I'm painting the paintings that I want to see in museums. And I'm hopefully presenting them in a way that's universal enough that they become representative of something different than just a black body on a canvas.

I always think about race as a part of one's identity, not the whole of one's identity. You don't want it to be the defining characteristic of a character. There has to be more.

I just want to tell black stories.

There were no small brown kids as the centre of the children's fiction I grew up with.

I believe that a lot of minority writers stress about whether they get pigeonholed in writing about identity stuff, like you can't write about other things.

I had a niche. And my niche was that I was brown. So it's like, 'Great, I get to go up for all these 'brown parts.'' I call them 'brown parts' because that's what they are. That's not to be resentful, because I loved playing those parts - I got to meet so many cool actors.

I know a lot of kids following in my footsteps, not only from my heritage, but there's younger generations trying to follow in my footsteps, so it's really cool just to be the start of something pretty special for our culture.

You hold everybody that's Polynesian or Samoan on your shoulders. You want to do your best to represent that in the best way that you can.

You turn 'Insecure' on, and you see a sea of brown. You see at the core of it a strong friendship between two brown-skinned girls.

When people think of the South Side of Chicago, they don't think about where I'm from. It was sort of a pocket: this idyllic community of black people who took care of each other, knew each other, spent time with each other.

I've always considered myself a person of color.