Buchi Emecheta Quotes

Where I grew up, it was all people who were black and Latino, people who look like me. Now I live in a neighborhood where very, very few people look like me.

There were very few black people in Montana but we never felt out of place.

When I first started doing comedy, there was no such thing as a room that had black people and white people in it. That didn't exist.

The world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961.

Mind you, I live in an area of Atlanta that is nearly 88% black. But in six days in and around Melbourne, I saw maybe three people of African origin and maybe one easily identifiable Australian aborigine.

America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants.

I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don't have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we're doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality.

The integration of the Negro into American society is one of the most exciting challenges to self-development and self-mastery that any nation of people ever faced.

One of the interesting things about Los Angeles is that it's still supplying the whole of the world with its dreams through movies and songs and TV - often of an all-American family at the same time as the real Los Angeles is peopled by souls from Vietnam, Guatemala, and Korea who look nothing like the images being beamed out. I think all that is going to have to change and illusion is going to have to catch up with reality in that regard.

I do think that people have a desire to talk about issues they may have wanted to avoid before. I've never had so many random conversations with people where they're so ready to talk about race, gender, sexual identity, or things that are happening in politics.

I think that America is more diverse than ever before, and is continuing to become more diverse, and our content should and is reflecting that.

If you're of multiple races, you have a different challenge, a unique challenge of embracing all of who you are but still finding a way to identify yourself and I think that's often hard for us to do.

I grew up in a small Southern town, and there were white people and black people. Coming to New York to go to Columbia, every time I went into the subway I was absolutely astounded because you see people from all over the world who actually live here - who aren't just here as tourists.

I was 15 when my family moved to Jidda from Britain in 1982. Living in Saudi Arabia was such a shock to my system that I like to say I was traumatized into feminism.

I thought everything would be different in America. It wasn't.

One of the things that is so striking to me about the South, especially living here now as an adult, is that I see a lot more mixed-race couples than I saw when I was growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s. I feel like living across the color lines has become something that's more expected.

Our family is mixed. My oldest sister married a black man in 1962, which was way out there then.

When I first came to this country I was this new kid from the Caribbean. England was a rude awakening for me.

Growing up in Malaysia, there wasn't really a problem with representation. We saw faces like ours on screen because Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, China and Hong Kong all have their own film markets. It was only until I went back to the U.K. when I realized, 'Where did all these faces go?'

I was born in the Eighties, and at that time the idea of having a mixed-race child wasn't welcome. Then I was also an unusual mix nobody was used to seeing. So people weren't very accepting of me in the beginning, but later that changed.

But it's different in England. We have different players from different races, even in the lower leagues. They don't have that in some places abroad.

There are people with a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear of the unknown. They think that immigration is a danger, when really it is a solution. This is an interesting issue, because it will be a central question of our time.

So that’s what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don’t know that. What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

Because of the internet and communications, the clash of cultures is much more direct. People feel, I think, less certain about their identity, less certain about economic security.