Sonia Sotomayor Quotes

You always wonder whether the attacks on my capabilities came from an honest evaluation of my accomplishments or from stereotypical presumptions that we, people of color, just can't do it, for some reason. This is, for an accomplished Latino, an accomplished African American, an accomplished anyone who disproves stereotypes, it's a constant battle in your life.

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.

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

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

The girl next door isn't necessarily blonde and blue-eyed anymore. So I don't feel like I need to morph into that all-American thing.

There's this responsibility you feel to present a certain thing that kind of respectability politics. I think that became the only accepted way of defining black culture. I started to become too aware of 'How does this look?' instead of 'Who are these characters?'

People often expect that I should know a lot of things because I'm black. I don't really explain it to people, but it's like, I'm from Australia, my Mum's Aussie, and I grew up with five other Aussie brothers and sisters.

Early in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy.

To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.

Film was something I didn't really think about when I was young, because if you looked like me, you weren't a film star.

I actually spoke to one of the heads of a studio, and he said I confuse middle America. Basically, when they see a black person, they see athlete, they see rapper, or they see criminal or something like that. And then when they hear a British accent, they hear posh, so they hear lawyer or doctor.

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

What is it to be white? It does mean something to be Norwegian. It means something to be Polish or German or Spanish. But 'white' is simply a catchall for 'light-skinned person.' It doesn't really mean anything.

I'm not a representative of blackness, and I'm not a healer.

I hope that when people see Asian women, they realize we are all different. A lot of time with Caucasian people, they just group us together as Asian. But even with different cities in China, people have different personalities... We look Asian, but we still look different. We don't look the same.

There are people who are blond and blue-eyes who are walking through airports that are terrorists. There are people who look exactly like me who are terrorists.

I was one of three kids of colour in our school. There was a young black brother and sister, and me. So we stood out.

I don't want to be that stereotypical black girl that's mad all the time.

People are like, 'Was it hard growing up mixed?' 'Did you not fit in?' and I'm like, 'No? What? That's the dumbest question ever.'

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

I definitely am not white.

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

When I was growing up in Newcastle, there was one other Indian girl, and we got confused for each other constantly.

As a black woman I always felt growing up I had to do above and beyond stuff to be noticed, to feel like I could hang with everybody else.

I'm interested in Native American and African American stories, and LGBTQ stories and stories of persons of mixed heritage. These are the stories I want to see onscreen and on the pages.