Venkatraman Ramakrishnan Quotes

… from humanity to nationality to bestiality

People are equal, cultures are not.

In New York, a Jew is a Jew, an Italian is an Italian, a Muslim is a Muslim: Nobody's going out of his way to treat you in a special way.

As an Italian-American, I have a special responsibility to be sensitive to ethnic stereotypes.

Being black, Latino, or Asian is not a genre. Romantic comedies, thrillers, action - those are genres. I think there's a lot of people who want to have the conversation. I don't think people are afraid of it, I just think it's the time to have that conversation. Race is not a genre.

We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one race, the human race.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

Black history is part of American history, and it should be treated as such.

Why am I a liberal? Because I don't forget that I'm an immigrant and that I'm a Hispanic and that I have a Latin accent when I speak English, and I want to defend those who get racially profiled by people who would discriminate against us?

Human evolution relies on cooperation, which is why identity politics feels so backward.

Nothing in the world causes more problems than concepts of ethnic virtue. It's irrelevant.

We live in a society that wants to label you with a color, sexuality, religion, or ethnicity. It divides us, but it also allows us to find pride in our identity.

In America, aren't we all supposed to see beyond class, see beyond ethnicity? Are all these lines drawn to set us apart and lock us into groups?

I think we shall have ceased to be a racially divided society only when we stop making a fuss about colour.

I don't like identity. We accept identities in Israel. We make them holy. But what does identity really mean?

It really should not matter which colour of skin a person has. I know where my roots are, and I know that I've been born and raised in Germany. I see myself as a German, and I like to show that.

Black culture is pop culture, Black History Month is every month, and that's something they want us to forget. What better way to remember than to highlight all of our differences as a singular people across the globe?

I think a lot about our globalized world, our global interconnectedness, and it really saddens me when I see people 'othering,' when I see people who are willing to live narrowly.

Racism is a perceptive error, and what you actually have to do is you have to get into spaces where you're meeting people and perceiving them as human beings and not as racial stereotypes and myths.

Racism really, really makes me mad. I can see identical traits in people from other sides of the world and I can't believe some people would treat other human beings like they weren't even the same species.

I always had my views on racial tolerance. I couldn't see why anyone would dislike or to the nth degree hate someone simply because they were a different color.

Soccer, more often than not, helps to unite the world. What this Muslim ban is doing is dividing it: separating 'Us' and 'Them' to another degree, adding more division to a country that already struggles with race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender.

We still have work to do in our efforts to advance equal rights for all Americans.

Undoubtedly Obama's multi-ethnic heritage is part of his appeal. There is something in his background that we can all relate to and grab hold of.

My life won't have full quality until we achieve equality for all.