Byron Allen Quotes

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.

It's not enough even to have one black Barbie... because black women are not a monolith.

In England, you feel like a member of the revolutionary guard the minute you even mention race. But I do think that the OscarsSoWhite phenomenon will have to reflect back on England. What people are essentially saying is that they want to see more diverse stories. It's not about putting three black people in the back of the shot.

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I grew up figure skating, and in figure skating there is only a handful of black people at the time figure skating with me.

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

We understand 'Roots,' and that experience was mind-boggling, and it changed the way society viewed race relations. It was incredibly important. With 'Roots,' I was just as proud as anybody else that people of color were getting their stories told.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.

I would like to see more films being made with people of color behind the camera and in front of the camera, because the more times at bat we have, the better we get.

I think what we need, especially in publishing, is more commissioning editors and editors who are people of colour.

In fact, some reviewers have said that as they got into the story they forgot that the protagonist is a black woman. They were moved by the story - by the people as a whole - and not by the little things.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

I think it is so great right now that we are in an age where there's an African American president in office. I think it is important for our generation to really witness that.

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.

The challenge facing America in the next century will be the shaping, at long last, of a truly common public culture, one responsive to the long silenced cultures of color.

I do know in the 1960s comics, Martian Manhunter took on the form of a black man - that could have been influenced by the political climate back then.

I think it's a little much to expect the organisation to solve the problem of racial parity. We do see a fast-increasing influx of Asians, black folks. I actually see black folks out here, unlike some of our liberal critics.

I have lots of hopes for black actors in general, whether they be on TV or on stage or in movies, and that is that we move beyond the tokenism of what it means to be black in a particular set of circumstances.

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.

I feel an obligation to use black dancers because there must be more opportunities for them, but not because I'm a black choreographer talking to black people.

Our culture today that we live in is getting so diverse, yet in Hollywood, there's not a lot of diversity.

There's racist casting, and there is normal casting. Normal casting, to me, is a process that strives for representation and, in many cases, strives to simply portray the world as it actually is instead of as falsely non-inclusive. And sadly, sometimes that involves removing the whitewash that exists on history.

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?