Keiynan Lonsdale Quotes

People look at me, and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. I always thought I'd be the white person in a black play.

Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.

The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

I don't look like a white woman. I look Somali.

A lot people who hear that 'Go New York Go' assume that I must be black.

I've been seesawing between not doing too much racial stuff - because I'd rather be known as the funny comedian than the funny Chinese comedian - but at the same time embracing my voice and who I am and what makes me unique, you know, which is the racial background.

Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

Well who's black and what is a black person?

I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian. And why did you take the name of Quinn, they used to say to me. Hey, you're an Indian, so I played Indians.

Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African.

I was made fun of in the Midwest - I was the only Asian in my graduating class of 200. Fortunately, I found my niche, and it was fine. But I wanted to be so white, you wouldn't believe it. I was like, 'I want to be white; I don't want to be this anymore.' But now I embrace it.

There's no question that I'm African-American. OK? I'm a black man. We're not going to escape that.

People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!

I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.

There are so many people who have this idea of who I am because I'm black.

I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.

There are some Chicanos who don't want to be Chicanos - they want to be Mexican-American, Hispanic, or even Spanish.

I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.

Even though I'm Hispanic, I'm so white.

They just think I'm a white dude. Every once in a while someone thinks I'm Jewish. I get a lot of stuff, but never Latino.

No one tells every white person in this country how to be. No one tells every Hispanic, or Asian or Jewish person in this country how to be. There is no single definition of whiteness or single definition of blackness.

Unlike Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Jackie Robinson never tried to convert himself into an acceptable black man.