Jerome Boateng 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.

Being born in Jamaica, race was never an issue. It was always about the type of person I wanted to be, not the colour of my skin.

One of these days every person in Canada will be a Canadian.

I think people are more than their heritage or their skin colour or their name or how they grew up.

I grew up in America - I was born and raised in Texas. I might look different, but at the same time, I'm pretty American.

Toronto is a very multicultural city, a place of immigrants, like my parents.

I am Chinese - it doesn't matter what other people say.

As long as our civilisation keeps trundling along generally forwards, then there is the possibility of a future where ethnicity is merely an interesting badge, not a uniform you can't take off.

I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.

I've never bothered about my color. I never had that thing about being black. If the whole world was like that, maybe there would be more harmony and love. Maybe. I don't have a problem with being black in a white country or being with my people.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

We as Americans of Latin descent are just as American as anyone else of any other descent.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

Our cultural diversity has most certainly shaped our national character.

It's strange; when I was younger and people would ask, 'Where are you from?', I'd say, 'West Africa', which was odd because I'm obviously not African, but it was my home.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

In America, you're just an American. You're accepted. It doesn't matter that you're of whatever race. If anything, I'm British, and that's it. So let's just get on with it, really.

The opposite of segregation is not integration. Martin Luther King didn't dream about a completely integrated world. He knew this was a pluralistic society and that ethnics tend to keep an identity. It's not a contradiction.

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green.

I am a Londoner. I'm British. I'm of Islamic faith, Asian origin, Pakistani heritage, so whether it's ISIS or others who want to destroy our way of life and talk about the West, they're talking about me. What better antidote to the hatred they spew than someone like me being in this position.

I'm Puerto Rican, but I represent everybody.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

I don't consider myself an Iranian comedian; I consider myself a comedian who happens to be of Iranian descent.

Our nation's multiculturalism is what makes us so special as a nation.