Michael Dyson Quotes

When I lived in England my perception of what people thought of me was largely formed by the media.

People see me as Andre first. Then they see me as someone who happens to be a Muslim.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn't matter as much as how I would be perceived.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

Funny how defined we are by how we present ourselves to the world.

Some people remember me for my color; some people remember me as a friend.

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn't identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.

I don't see myself as exotic.

Black people have to define who we are, or others do it for us.

I think where you're born brings a history with it - a cultural history, a mythical history, an ancestral history, a religious context - and certainly influences your perception of the world and how you interpret everyday reality.

If I could get their attention long enough, I felt they would see beneath the boobs and find the heart, and that they would see beneath the wig and find the brains. I think one big part of whatever appeal I possess is the fact that I look totally one way and that I am totally another. I look artificial, but I'm not.

I was born in Honduras, that's where I was born. I live in California, where no matter what you say, you're Mexican. You understand that? It doesn't matter what you say. See - you don't understand that, white people, because wherever you go, you're white. You're here, you're white. You go to L. A., you're white. You go to Denver, you're white. You go to Miami, you're still white. In L. A. I'm a Mexican, In Florida, I'm a Cuban. In New York, I'm a Puerto Rican. And when I come to Canada and I find out I'm an Eskimo.

Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.

If people want to think I'm an Indian prince, I don't want to dispel that notion.

I lived in London for a long time, and that's a pretty white town. In Toronto, I just ended up in this circle of indie rock kids who happened to be white, too... Really, it was just when I started getting out there and meeting more people and seeing more fans that I went, 'Oh, actually, I'm not white.'

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

I'm comfortable being old... being black... being Jewish.

In real life, I'm not super-posh but if that's the stereotype, I really don't care. It could be worse.

To others we are not ourselves but performers in their lives cast for a part we do not even know we are playing.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.

Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don't know that I'm most people's definition of what a black person is. I'm mixed, yes, but in the world I'm defined as black before I'm defined white. I've never been called white.