Jawanza Kinjufu Quotes

I grew up never seeing myself on-screen, and it's really important to me to give people who look like me a chance to see themselves. I want to see myself as the hero of any story. I want to see myself save the world from the bomb.

I thought, 'Oh, this is great,' because maybe someone who does look like me will watch 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' and realize that they can be an actor if they want to be, or they can be a superhero. They can have a hero that looks like them as well.

You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.

I didn't see a lot of women who looked like me on TV when I was growing up.

Stronger than all the armies is the idea whose time has come. The time has come for equality in sharing in government and education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.

The colored employees of the Government shall be treated precisely as the whites are treated. If they attend to their duty they will not be disturbed.

We [Chicago] are known as the city that works. You gotta make sure it works for everybody and not just a few.

I grew up watching cinema in my country that wasn't telling stories about us, and we had to find a way to connect, and our references, our role models had nothing to do with us. And I'm so glad that it's changing.

When I grew up, I never saw anyone looking like me on TV, you know? I'm so glad to see a lot more of us on television, whether it's Mindy Kaling or it's Irrfan Khan or Freida Pinto. You know, I hope, like, little girls across the world can just look at me and say, 'Ah, I want to be that!' Indian or not, it shouldn't matter.

I just didn't see anyone on TV who looked like me, and then I saw George Takei being cool and piloting the spaceship on television.

Let me speak for myself: I think I wanted to see people who looked like me on TV. I wanted to see people who had similar experiences as I had, growing up. There was nobody on television when I was a teenager who I could relate to.

If we want little girls and young women and people of color to see they have a place in the tech world, it's up to us to make that place for them.

It's hard to be what you can't see.

I can't tell you how many resumes we get from business schools across the country from black women and black men and Hispanic women, men, etcetera, who say I'm interested in working for your company because they can see someone at the top who looks like them.

I knew a lot of black scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and female mathematicians and engineers, women of all backgrounds. So this idea that anyone could be an engineer, a mathematician, or whatever, was something that I had grown up with and thought was really normal.

I feel bad for my little cousins who don't see themselves being represented, or the little girls in my community who won't have a chance to see a Disney princess... who resembles them.

There's room for everyone, and everyone is wanted and needed. Whoopi showed me that. When I first saw 'The Color Purple,' it was so huge. That was the first time I had seen myself, my mother, my aunts, women that I had known my whole life on-screen. It gives us hope, and it gives us confidence.

If you put one model in a show or in an ad campaign, that doesn't solve the problem. We need teachers in universities. We need internships. We need people of different ethnic backgrounds in all parts of the industry. That really is the solution: you have to change it from the inside.

We absolutely need more role models. I think we need more people to come forward and be proud of who they are.

If you can't see it, you can't be it.

It's important for kids to see someone who looks like them carving his own path. I definitely acknowledge that, and I think it's super great.

Seeing someone that you can relate to in the media is everything as a child, and a lot of people are not granted that luxury.

Seeing the road show of 'A Chorus Line' in 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Memphis was a life-changing event for me: there were gay people, on the stage, and they all lived in New York.

Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens. Education is not just for a privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right.

I know one of the reasons I first started making Youtube videos was because no one looks like me.