We must give Italians a sense of race.
In Australia, it's people from Asian countries who most often recognise me. There are often people just looking at me at the supermarket, like they're shocked to think I would go to the supermarket.
Those who came to the United States didn't realize they were white until they got here. They were told they were white. They had to learn they were white. An Irish peasant coming from British imperial abuse in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, arrives in the United States. You ask him or her what they are. They say, "I am Irish." No, you're white. "What do you mean, I am white?" And they point me out. "Oh, I see what you mean. This is a strange land."
When I was growing up, Asians were so few and far between as to be almost invisible. And so the idea of an Asian American movement or an Asian American thrust in this country was unthinkable.
I wanted to represent for Polynesians, and that was always my goal, because not everyone knows about us, and I just want to represent for them.
As a child, I didn't even realize I was Chinese. I was Singaporean, but my identity was wrapped up in the culture I was experiencing every day.
Where I grew up, people obviously knew my dad because it's a small place and he was the top player for Swinton - they'd go and watch him play, see him in the papers, so they knew he was black.
In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food... they've never even tasted it!
I'm conscious of my race and ethnicity in the legislature - it's hard not to be.
I think it's an important thing for a Mexican to say, especially now with the rebellion in Chiapas. Mexico has to confront her Indian face, and yet she refuses to do so. When you turn on Mexican television, it's like watching Swedish TV: everyone is blond.
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.
I grew up with white friends, Asian friends - Vietnamese, Chinese, Pacific Islanders. I had Hispanic friends, not just Mexican friends, but Guatemalan friends, Honduran friends, and we knew the difference, you know?
I thought I was half white or something because I only know white people as Ferguson as their last name.
You need Black [people] sometimes to understand things about Black culture.
There were only ever two black kids at my school. I never considered myself to be 'a black kid'. I was who I was. Which isn't to say things haven't happened to me that wouldn't have happened if I wasn't black.
As a result of the awareness and consciousness of decline, an awareness and consciousness of a national ethnicity or an Islamic identity also came into being.
