Michael Emerson Quotes

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

There were people who voted for Obama simply because he was the first African-American. We had a lot of people that would not have voted for Obama but who did because they really hoped that the nation, making the statement electing an African-American president, would prove once and for all that this is not a racist nation. I believe that there were all kinds of people that voted for Obama with that hope. That was the reason. Everything else was irrelevant to them.

Interestingly, a lot of the polling that I see is not along racial lines, but along generational lines. We are doing better and better among younger people, not so well among older people, whether they're African-American, whether they're white or whether they're Latino.

[According to Twitter] 24 percent of American Twitter users are African-American. That's about twice as high as African-Americans are represented in the population.

According to today's Los Angeles Times, Gray Davis now gets negative job ratings from white people, black people, Latinos, Republicans, Independents and even Democrats. Say what you want about the guy but he's a uniter!

Blaxploitation films were black films targeting black people. They were films made to appeal to a culture in a way that was supposed to be unfiltered.

A white lady came running up to me after a show. She goes, What gives you the right to do jokes about black people like that. And I'm like, Listen lady, my best friend is Cuban. And that's close enough.

One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.

I love "Phenomenal Woman." The experiences she had of being African American in the U.S. - that itself is a task. I appreciate the hardships Maya Angelou went through for our generation. I'm super influenced by the black people that paved the way for us.

There's no doubt that many of the mainstream white institutions tend to be cosmetic and symbolic when it comes to including African-Americans, whereas we black folk tend to be much more sensitive about embracing others, and we have a long history of that.

The world has white people and black people in it. Even in Harlem.

Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.

Things are shifting; man is evolving in many different ways. The Internet has created a portal for people to connect with each other in a way they never could have before. When it comes to African-American or black films, it's different because there is a model that you can actually look at, an equation that shows that these films earn money.

I have been painting white people for much longer in my life than I have done for colored people.

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

I do hope after my crossing that more people will follow suit.

Why do so many black and Hispanic people vote for liberals who so energetically support the murder of black and Hispanic babies?

I'm continually astonished with myself how different people bring out things in me that I never knew I had inside me. Each new friendship can make you a new person, because it opens up new doors inside of you.

The weight of the world isn't on their shoulders as much in Canada as opposed to America. Americans' perception of it is, "Oh, it seems like a pretty nice place to live. And everyone there is nice. So if people around you are nice, you have a tendency to be nicer." What a wonderful lesson for the rest of the world: Just let a little kindness rub off on you.

We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored.

Most people's lives are a direct reflection of their peer groups.

Your reputation is what influences people to think, feel and talk about you the way they do.

To a certain extent everybody has a certain sort of way of being a persona that they learn how to be when they're really little. They figure out that if they're really funny, or really pretty, or if they work really, really hard or are really smart, then that's what's going to get them by. That is what is going to make people like them.

I don't think that comedy is going to affect or change anything. I remember back in 2004 people were like, "How does it feel knowing that you're going to be part of the shifting tide in the political system?" And in the end nothing changed, and we weren't part of anything. And we're not happy anywhere. I think we're kind of hoping, obviously, but it didn't really have a great impact on people.

People can't help what topics cut them deep. It all depends on who's inferring - and what the contexts of their lives are at the time.