Michel Foucault Quotes

There are plenty of Latina actresses that no one's ever heard of... Some are really brown, some are light-skinned, and some look like they're Caucasian, but it's like we only want to identify with a certain kind of look and celebrate that under the guise that this is a 'Latina actress.'

Look, yes, I'm a Muslim woman and I want to bring my community to the table, but I also want to make sure that I'm not being tokenized.

Representation is a sort of surveillance.

Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.

Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head - because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself.

You kinda say, 'Well, straight people don't have to come out.' I understand now that's not necessarily the right way to look at it.

Labels can be really helpful when we have the autonomy to label ourselves. But when other people label us without our permission, that's when it becomes dangerous.

As black Americans continue to be insulted and dismissed by protected white liberals, the Black Talented Tenth will continue to benefit from political donations, speaking engagements, national media presence, accolades as the official black leaders, and perpetual gigs on MSNBC and CNN.

More visibility is more power, but more vulnerability.

Visibility is not, in itself, always a good thing, but when it is in the hands of those who need positive visibility, it can be.

When I speak, I don't speak for myself; I don't have the luxury of a Caucasian to be able to speak for myself. I speak for a whole community, and I represent so many different communities that that felt like a lot of pressure.

This idea of, oh, poor little black person, oh, poor little poor person, oh, poor little woman, oh, poor little indigenous person - everybody's a poor little something! I don't try and please everybody.

You could say I don't want for me be seen primarily as a gay writer. I've never hidden my sexuality. It matters that I'm gay, it matters that I'm white, it matters that I'm male, it matters that I'm American. But basically it's just less and less of a big deal.

Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.

It's no wonder there is a mad scramble for victim status on many campuses today. It confers authority and prestige.

A consultation process is what some authority sets in motion preparatory to doing what it intended all along.

People of excellence will always be brought before people of influence.

The same old hypocrisy. Life is a fight, and the strongest wins. All civilization does is hide the blood and cover up the hate with pretty words!

I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't make sense. All friendships are negotiations of power.

The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.

I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.

It's hard to separate art from artists so transgender musicians will never be mainstream until transpeople are looked at as notable as maybe redheads.

The culture war is between the winners and those who think they're losers who want to become winners. The losers think the only way they can become winners is by banding together all the losers and them empowering a leader of the losers to make things right for them.

That people equate being girlie with being nonthreatening … I mean, I can't think of a more blatant example of playing into exactly the thing that we're trying to fight against. I can't be girlie? I think the fact that people are associating being girlie with weakness, that needs to be examined. I don't think that it undermines my power at all.

To challenge norms, presuppositions, practices in communities across this country - where the unconscious valorization and celebration of whiteness and conscious resistance to trying to grapple with black and brown and other peoples of color's ideas and identities - makes a huge difference.