Cultural Stigma Quotes

There are so many people in the closet, and we are giving them an opportunity to come out of the closet and just admit they like to smoke.

I did not want people to know that I was a Muslim; I did not want people to know my name or that I did not have an American name. I did not want that. Because I knew if they knew that, they would cast me as the bad guy.

A person dishonored is worst than dead.

Some Mexicans go to Hollywood and lose career in Mexico because they play imitation. I don't want this to happen to me.

Indians have a big problem with alcohol and drugs. I grew up with an admiration for their culture and was sensitive to their problems.

In 1978, 'Time' magazine sent me to do a story about children in Southeast Asia fathered by American GIs. What I saw was very upsetting, but the story they published was whitewashed.

Black women have been screaming about famous predators like R&B singer R. Kelly, who allegedly preys on black girls, for well over a decade to no avail.

I'm not a country music fan, so if you slide me some music and say, 'You gotta check this out; it's country,' I'm going to be a little hesitant to listen, and I think if someone says, 'Hey, you gotta listen to this guy rap; he's Christian,' you're like, 'I don't identify as Christian, so not really sure I want to listen to that.'

People of color, particularly African Americans, feel the stigma more keenly. In a race-conscious society, some don't want to be perceived as having yet another deficit.

At times in my life, I have been utterly lonely. At other times, I've had disgusting infectious diseases. Try admitting these things in our culture.

Some women facing 'honour' crimes require relocation far outside the reaches of their extended families and changes of identity to escape detection.

When America became stigmatized in the '60s as racist, sexist and militaristic, it wanted moral authority above all else.

Maybe it's because I'm English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it.

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

It wasn't so long ago that it was not popular to speak Gaelic in Ireland because the areas that Gaelic is spoken in were much poorer areas.

Hitler really ruined that mustache for everybody. It’s really an interesting mustache, but now, no one can wear it.

Black people are killing themselves with alcohol ... it is a scourge of our neighborhoods. It's a disease that feeds on our people.

My problem is that I'm negative - I come from Romania. Romanians are a little bit negative in thinking. Everyone knows that. That's normal here.

We [Americans] have secularized the public life of our country in such a way to say something is religious is something negative. Religion has now turned into a way to discredit people. It is futile and dishonest to argue about religion. Religion is a phenomenological umbrella; there are all kinds of religions. It makes a difference when your religion is telling you something true or something false.

I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.

I remember, growing up, it wasn't sexy to be African. We got called names.

If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.

Paradoxically, it’s the honor of the raped girl’s family that is tarnished and she ends up dead by the hands of her own kin, her own father or brother.

I was taught you don't tell your secrets to strangers - certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure. My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.

That's part of what I touch on in my [UN] speech - when assaults happen on women and girls in these fragile countries, in these places of crisis, there isn't the psychosocial support. There aren't counseling services. It's not in a lot of cultures to explicitly talk about things that maybe have happened to the body. So, repression of emotion, and shame, and guilt is something that really needs to be handled in humanitarian crises.