Thomas Chatterton Williams Quotes

We Muslims in the West, like Jews before us, grapple with the same issues that Jews of the past did: integration or isolation, tradition or reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.

Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.

The question of boundaries is a major question of the Jewish people because the Jews are the great experts of crossing boundaries. They have a sense of identity inside themselves that doesn't permit them to cross boundaries with other people.

There are some Chicanos who don't want to be Chicanos - they want to be Mexican-American, Hispanic, or even Spanish.

I was always in new schools and had British parents, which was not the norm, and I think there was also... I'm not particularly religious, but I was born Jewish, and I always felt like the outsider because I wasn't Christian or Catholic.

Growing up in Beverly Hills, everyone was Jewish, and I always secretly wanted to be.

I'm three quarters Scottish, but I sound English. I don't really see British as a race.

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.

I've never understood people who say they're not a practicing Jew. You never hear a black guy say he's not a practicing African-American. What does it even mean?

When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

The Jews are a race and not a religion. My goal was not to persecute the Jews but to enlighten Gentiles to put them on guard.

Sometimes, growing up, I tried to be very Latina; I would change my voice... experiment with my hair a lot, trying to figure out who I was in a primarily white school.

I was the only black girl at my junior high school. I had an afro, a Jamaican accent, I looked really old.

Jewish history turns out not to be an either/or story - as in, either pure Judaism detached from its surroundings or else assimilation - but rather, for the vast majority, the adventure of living in between.

Who cares about that stuff? This is America, not Jerusalem. I'm an American. Let Harry be a Jew.

Jews are the intensive form of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt.

I must have been yearning for some Jewish content beyond my genetic makeup because soon after my 21st birthday, I noticed I was no longer dating WASPs.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

My father was ethnically Jewish, but his family converted to Catholicism.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

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

The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community.

What we want in this country is not Jews who can successfully keep up their Jewishness in a few large ghettos, but men and women who have grown up in freedom and can assert themselves wherever they are. A parochial system of education among the Jews would be fatal to such hopes.

Italians are Aryans. Jews do not belong to the Italian race..