Kelis Quotes

I feel that when a white child goes to school only with white children, unconsciously that child grows up in many instances devoid of a world perspective. There is an unconscious provincialism, and it can develop into an unconscious superiority complex just as a Negro develops an unconscious inferiority complex.

For children, diversity needs to be real and not merely relegated to learning the names of the usual suspects during Black History Month or enjoying south-of-the-border cuisine on Cinco de Mayo. It means talking to and spending time with kids not like them so that they may discover those kids are in fact just like them.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

We are united in the hope that every individual will someday enjoy at least the intellectual privileges we have had, if not always the material advantages.

I am not here as having one vote in the national legislature to shut the door in the face of any of the Caucasian race that are willing to come, whether they be educated or uneducated, and under the hand of honest, earned bread, the common [i.e. public] schools will take care of the children.

I've grown up in a very diverse background.

My adopted parents were able to pay for me to go to a private school. So I had it better than most people.

I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.

I don't think that being Hispanic, being black, being white - I don't think that limits you to anything. I think everyone should just go for what they want.

My parents weren't cultured people.

I grew up believing in meritocracy and the American dream. My parents came here from India. They had no connections. My brother and I went to public schools, and both of us succeeded.

I was born to a Nigerian dad and a Kenyan mom, and coming to the States was really academic.

I think that's what all New Zealanders who are fair-minded want - a good chance for everybody to get ahead, whether it's education or housing.

I'm proud to be an American. I'm proud to be an African American in America. I've had some interesting experiences: some great, some not so great, but I love it here.

This is the place where anybody - like an African American kid raised by a single mom - can be president.

If the Republican Party works with the Hispanic community, the immigrant community, they're natural allies. People who came to this country are more freedom-loving and more American than people who just happened to be born here.

Education, when delivered properly, can benefit a lot of people and make productive citizens out of those otherwise given no hope.

I don't want the whole of my writing or my intellectual energy given over to race because I have diverse interests.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

I really feel that I had a genuinely diverse, multicultural upbringing, and I just don't find New York to be quite as diverse. Maybe I'm romanticising, but I feel that I was exposed to a real melting pot in terms of culture and pop culture. My kids are essentially middle-class, but I do try to remind them that they come from humble beginnings.

It's not even about black and white anymore, because so many people are from mixed backgrounds and mixed ethnicities, and it's just a great time to be able to pull all that together.

I don't know if I would've had the opportunity to be on 'Wizards of Waverly Place' if it weren't for my heritage. I realize everybody wants what they don't have. But at the end of the day, what you have inside is much more beautiful than what's on the outside!

We live in such a sheltered environment in the United States. I've been fortunate enough to have traveled all over the world, and I've seen things you only read about and see on the news.

When I was growing up, Forest Park was full of integrated families. It was amazing. One my best friends was Vietnamese. Another one was half-Mexican, half-black. Another one was from Colombia. Another one was born in the U.S., but his mom was from Germany and spoke with a German accent. So we all had multiple identities.