Son Heung-min Quotes

There aren't many Asian players in Europe or the Premier League, so that's more attention for me.

There weren't many black players when I was growing up, and I remember playing and looking up to the ones that were playing.

In the tennis world, there weren't a whole lot of Asians playing. You see it a little bit more now. The same can really be said for basketball.

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to.

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.

Jeremy Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career.

It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American.

I'm black and white, so either, sometimes, you're not considered by the breakdown of the script: you're not 'black enough' for this role. Or you're not 'white enough' for this role. Or, like, looking up to people, who do I identify with? And not seeing Barbies that maybe look like me.

At one point, there wasn't a black quarterback in the NFL. When you start winning, then you start seeing more. Jumping up and down and screaming and calling people names is not going to change anything.

Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.

If you're going to make black movies only about black people, that's as bad as white movies only about white people.

For me, whenever I would see a lot of 'black films,' I didn't feel represented in it. I didn't feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.

When I was studying comedy in Chicago, it wasn't long after 9/11. There were a lot Middle Eastern comedians who were doing bits about hailing cabs and being terrorists. So the first two years, I didn't do any of that because I wanted to separate myself from those guys. But race is a big part of who I am, and it should be a big part of my comedy.

American myths have never been colorless.

I don't want to not be African. The goal is to live in a world where my race doesn't limit my access, where I can see myself represented in the highest level of society without any limitation.

I'm a white guy in a black sport. I really forget about it until someone asks me about it. I'm simply competing in a sport that I love.

It's difficult in the Premier League.

I want to be a great role model to let the kids, especially black kids, that it's possible to make it in this sport. I think we, as a black community, quit playing the game because we think it's a white man's sport. Or we think that since other black people don't play it, so why should I play it.

There's not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have to do a little bit extra. Because the percentage of us playing this position, which people didn't want us to play... is low, so we do a little extra.

During all the years I entertained at the Baby Grand night club in Harlem, 90 percent of the audience was white. But when I tried to break Into television, I was told that white folks wouldn't understand what I was talking about.

In the early days of my carer as an actor, I shared what was then the prevailing attitude of Negro performers :;that the content and form of a play or a film scenario was of little importance to us. What mattered was was the opportunity, which came so seldom to our folks ... Later I came to understand that the Negro artist could not view the matter simply in terms of of his individual interests, and that he had a responsibility to his people who rightfully resented the traditional stereotyped portrayals of Negros on stage and screen.

I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'

The problem with a lot of movies when it comes to race is that they want to be moral, and they want to make the audience feel good about something that a lot of people don't feel good about.

Elvis [Presley] had a stepstool, if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture. They identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression.

I feel sorry for Obama because he's still got to fight the innate racism of Americans. I mean, did you see his first speech, when he got made President and they put all that bullet proof glass in front of him? I think that shows you how racist America still is. Just because he's black doesn't mean he's going to shoot anybody.