Dave Itzkoff Quotes

When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.

I feel a responsibility to continue creating complex roles for black women, especially young black women.

I don't know, I feel like as time has gone on, hip-hop has become really redundant and repetitive.

Until black culture as a whole is effectively disentangled from the python-grip of hip-hop, and by extension the street, we are not going to see any real progress.

The whole cultural diversity and musical diversity, I think they almost go hand in hand, you know? It's like a mind space or a it's having an open mind to what else is out there.

Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.

There is a certain danger in thinking about diversity in its own little box, as something that is somehow separate from 'normal' comic books and comics creators.

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it.

My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race.

If the writers all come from the same backgrounds, you are going to get the same sorts of characters. Get a broader variety of writers, and you get a bigger range of stories.

I was part of a hip-hop group called Fly Style. I was one of two white girls, and I was part of the younger company, which was called Touch of Style. And it was amazing. It gave me a different perception of dance and beauty because the other girls were mostly African-American and Latina.

What's incredible about 'Hamilton,' and the reason you can't get a ticket, is because everyone's responding to it. Everyone is seeing a bit of themselves in it.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

I always feel like people misunderstand the difference between an Asian story and an Asian-American story. That's completely different, too. I have friends who grew up in Asia, and our experiences are so different. Even though we might look the same, I feel like being Asian and then being Asian-American is completely different.

America seems much more diverse and has more exciting casting - they really take risks.

I want to put culture on a track so that it becomes more inclusive, more open source.

There is an imagined thing called black culture. But culture is a construction. It is learned behavior, not innate. The black American experience is the American experience.

We want to make tennis look like America when it comes to cultural backgrounds.

I've seen a couple white girls coming to my concerts wearing head wraps, and I think they look so cute. It's kind of sad to see that people are really into separation, trying to separate everybody and making a clear division of 'us against you,' even with fashion. That sucks. It's not the way the world is supposed to be.

In Hollywood, I was never restricted to just one Asian character. I've been cast as a Chinese, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Japanese and a Cambodian.

I want to see designers capitalize on a beauty that is not only white. I need them to stop acting like beautiful black and brown women do not exist.

The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?

I don't think that 'Vida' is just for Latinos. I don't think 'One Day at a Time''s just for Latinos.

I usually get approached by older white ladies of a certain class, with their pearls and, you know, their Talbots on and everything, and they're like, 'We just have to say, we know we're not your demographic, but we love Paper Boi; we really love this show, and we love what you're doing.' It's totally cool.

At least in my performances, the audience has become so diverse in a way that I don't think ballet has ever experienced.