Jon M. Chu Quotes

There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

People are making a lot more noise about representation and diversity. But I think modeling is one of the professions where people can be kind of racist.

I've never been more aware of my Asianness and femaleness than working in Hollywood.

I think as soon as you're a woman, or any minority doing something, you automatically become a representative for it, and I think a lot of brilliant women's interviews are being wasted on talking about what it's like being a woman.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

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

I used to go to some Harvard parties with my athlete friends, and they would introduce me as 'Winona, the Indian activist.' It made me uncomfortable. I felt like a novelty.

When advertisers ignore diversity, it is because they don't think the lives of others matter. There is not enough of a financial imperative for those lives to matter.

On the outside, America looks like this great melting pot, but on the inside, there's this segregation in American cinema. Why does a Latino film have to be for Latinos? Why is a black film just for black people? Why?

What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It's self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like.

There is a certain danger in thinking about diversity in its own little box, as something that is somehow separate from 'normal' comic books and comics creators.

It's understandable why TV hasn't been diverse because a lot of TV writers are white dudes from Harvard. And white dudes from Harvard aren't going to immediately want to write about trans issues. They're not immediately going to want to write about a Filipino family.

I resent anyone coming in and claiming to be a minority as I am.

It never occurred to me that some people were seen as wrong or even different.

The color and the diversity dies out, and it gets whiter and whiter, and that's in any field. There is also this idea that there can only be one gay person or there can only be one Asian-American woman in the office, and so it also perpetuates itself where we are isolated, especially the more successful we get.

I've heard about productions where it still happens: yellow face, taping up the eyes. It's hard to talk about it in a constructive way.

All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that's been discriminated against, knows what it's like.

Silicon Valley today is populated mostly by people who would consider themselves winners of the traditional race. This causes the exclusion of the voices that are vital to a round, robust society. It's beyond gentrification.

When something really affects you, it's hard to find the humor in it sometimes. There's are a lot of reasons why there are so many white male comedians, but I think part of it is that they are able to joke about a lot of things because a lot of things don't affect them personally.

My experience as a black woman in the industry is simply that often I was the only one in the room. Often I would be the only woman and the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several women but the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several people of color, but the only woman.

For the most part, it's straight white men running these labels and publishing companies.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

I do think that being a BAME actor does make it difficult to avoid stereotypes.