Jess Row Quotes

I knew there were calls for diversity in children's lit, but you always wonder as a person of color, how diverse is too diverse?

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.

It's not enough even to have one black Barbie... because black women are not a monolith.

There aren't many children's books about black characters that are just going on adventures. My library has over 2,000 children's books in it, and most of the protagonists are either white or creatures.

I grew up figure skating, and in figure skating there is only a handful of black people at the time figure skating with me.

I'm not for having to support everything that's black, because I definitely don't. But I do feel like it is imperative for us to see that we are not a monolithic people.

Come on, we would be foolish to say that there's never been African-American leads in some capacity, people of color in some capacity, leading shows or what have you. But it hasn't happened enough and in a manner that is an accurate reflection of the world that we live in.

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

I want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

Colored people come in all colors.

I'm tired of cookie-cutter monolithic representation of black folks.

I want authenticity. And rarely do actors - more specifically, black actors - get a chance to be authentic on film and television.

To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.

I had to say to myself, 'I haven't written enough about blackness, yet it's part of my consciousness and my lived experience.' I had to get over that anxiety of 'I haven't done this before.'

I believe that while race-neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body.

Any show that speaks to people of color feels the burden to never mess up, never make its characters look bad - to always get it right.

My work has never been about me, and I've never made a big deal about my race. I've actually tried hard to avoid ever making a big deal out of it and have, instead, simply tried to do good work that matters.

I'm not going to be one of those people who says, 'I'm a showrunner; I'm not a black showrunner.' I'm black when I go to sleep. I'm black when I wake up, period. It doesn't affect my perspective on everything, but at the same time, it's who I am, and I'm proud of it.

How many African American champions have there been over the course of WWE's history? It's something that was the elephant in the room. Nobody wanted to talk about it, but it was important for us to address it.

I'm looking for projects where race is not an issue.

I am tired of people using 'diverse' to mean 'of color.' That's not what that word means. 'Diversity' means people of all different races, all together - like a New York City subway.

It's odd to say we had our first African American president before our first African-American-owned movie studio, but we're making progress.