David Levering Lewis Quotes

This is a country where Jews and Arabs speak without fear. Where people come from different cultures the world over. Where everyone becomes Brazilian rapidly.

Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy.

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

Assimilation is what has made America great.

More than 300 languages are spoken in London. Religions are freely practiced. Rich and poor live on the same street, side by side. We've actually escaped many of the most difficult problems - integration and community cohesion.

Marseille has a big Muslim community. The good thing is it is a melting point: all nationalities in there. Everyone is fine with each other. It is really close to North Africa, to Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, so a lot of them come from there.

What sort of Europe do we want to have? Parallel societies? Muslim communities living together with the Christian community?

The truth is that many, if not most, nations of the world are made up of different peoples - and cultures and beliefs and religions - who find themselves thrown together by circumstance.

One of my key areas of unification is to champion multiracialism. Multiracialism is vital to unity.

I am on the side of pluralistic societies, and I will do whatever I can - by the best means available and any means necessary - to protect spaces that encourage open communication between people.

I suppose our lives need to be more integrated. We have white communities and black communities and white country clubs and black country clubs. It's very important when we integrate ourselves, and it helps us to have a better understanding of the world, to people all over the world and this is the time in history that we have become very aware of how important that is, so I think it's just really-we have to know each other and work together and play together in order to write about each other.

We are, by many measures, one of the more diverse cities in the country, growing more diverse all the time, and one of the more harmonious in terms of how we live together.

I want our students to be so accustomed to children of other cultures that the words 'diversity' and 'tolerance' won't be in their vocabulary. They won't need them - they'll live it.

Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures.

We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.

In the United Kingdom, we need to promote an inclusive British identity that involves and empowers people from all ethnic and faith backgrounds.

Ethnic diversity adds richness to a society.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

Each year, every city in the world that can should have a multiday festival. More people meeting each other, digging new types of music, new foods, new ideas. You want to stop having so many wars? This could be a step in the right direction.

I think every group of black guys should have at least one white guy in it.

The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think we should talk about who we are - that melting pot that we've become.

My school was 90 percent white, but 90 percent of the kids I played with were black. So I got the best of both worlds. I think that is where my comedy developed.

Blues became rock, rock became soul, and all of it was colorblind.

This multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side by side and live happily with each other has failed. Utterly failed.

In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else.