David Henry Hwang Quotes

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'

You cannot collectively, as a society, decide that you are only going to represent one part of a minority. It's like saying you've represented black people on television because you aired an episode of the 'Cosbys.'

Awards shows are being pushed to shed their genteel limousine liberalism and embrace the race-gender-sexual identity agenda in full.

Point-blank, there is not enough diversity in media.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.

I was the first South Asian female to do comedy videos on YouTube. But at the same time, all races face their barriers, and I've learned through YouTube, if it's not race, it will be sexism, if it's not sexism, it will be homophobia. It will always be something, and all voices should be heard.

When I first started, all the media I ever got was, 'Hey! There's this Indian girl. And even though she is Indian, she gets views and stuff.'

Statistics show that diversity in the media is pretty dismal. Critical voices from women and people of color are missing from many important conversations.

Personally, it's a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.

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.

My hope is that shows like 'Fresh Off the Boat' open the door for even more of those kinds of characters for Asian actors and actresses.

I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

'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.'

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

I was too Jewish for 'Flashdance.'

I look forward to the day when indigenous actors can play Hamlet and Ophelia and not just Othello and Desdemona.

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka.

I think Hollywood is so driven by money, the people who are making the decisions are not necessarily reflective of the melting pot, so what stories are you going to want to tell? You're going to want to tell stories about yourself.

Studio heads seem to be getting the message that there is not only an audience out there, but there is a desire for people to see people of colour in central roles and in authoritative roles.

When we've had images that perpetuate the negative stereotype of people of color, we've always had 'The Cosby Show' to hold up against that. And the fact that we no longer have that kinda leaves us not in a great place in terms of having the wide scope of the images of people of color.

In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.

It's insulting when somebody who is not a member of our community feels like they have a great understanding of what it's like to grow up gay in this country.