Stacey Abrams Quotes

Who included me among the ranks of the human race?

If we work on it, we can absolutely refuse any notion that suggests that after generations of contributing to this country, being a part of the bones and the marrow, that I'm supposed to be uncomfortable here.

I kind of understood inherently - and I wasn't really conflicted about this - that comics were not for me or by people who looked like me. That was just something that I accepted about the world.

I've lived my whole life trying to prove that I'm worthy of being a part of something because I never really felt that.

Never, ever, have I felt really accepted in Hollywood.

If you don't believe you don't belong.

I do feel like I'm not entirely an insider.

There's a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct - in my head, if I don't do it right, then I'll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.

I deeply believed that I wasn't worthy - that I couldn't be in the stories even I was creating. I don't want anyone else to feel like that.

I don't care if you're talking about gay, straight, black, white, how in the name of hell can you guarantee that nobody will ever feel unwelcome? I have felt it unwelcome everywhere I've been in life. Everybody else has, too. I mean, not everywhere, but it happens.

I suppose when you are an outsider, you will always be an outsider.

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'

Even though I was manically overachieving and involved in everything, I still never felt like I belonged. That's definitely affected my whole life and why I wanted to become an actor and tell people stories, because communication and feeling like you belong is such an integral part of our social fabric.

When we talk about communities, we seldom discuss the margins. But for every person nestled comfortably in the bosom of a community, there is someone else on the outskirts, feeling ambivalent. Ambiguous. Excluded. Unwilling or unable to come more fully into the fold.

When I first started, all the media I ever got was, 'Hey! There's this Indian girl. And even though she is Indian, she gets views and stuff.'

Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's through the back door.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

People who don't fit the mold are treated differently than those who do.

Discrimination is alive and soaring.

It's an important point to make that people can't just be invalidated, eradicated, because they don't fit tidily into a box. And more and more, the modern world is all about conformity.

Everybody else has been seen, been proven.

I enjoy my relationship with straight men. It's very nurturing. It's very validating to hang out with straight guys and be accepted. So many of us, we were not accepted when we were younger by straight persons in high school.

People don't talk to you properly. It's the way they talk to you; they dismiss you. I think it's a combination of me being a woman and a foreigner.

I always prided myself on being apart from the ruling class. I think it's always important, not just in Washington but in life, to be able to able to balance your sense of belonging with what it's like to be someone who doesn't belong.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.