Forced Identity Quotes

I find myself increasingly forced to think of my ethnic identity instead of the national identity I adopted as a boy in 1976. That is discomfiting for me, and a tragedy for America.

I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?

A lot of people decide, if you're mixed, you're black. And so they try to force you to choose a culture.

When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.

I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

In primary school, every day and especially on Fridays, I was supposed to say, 'I am Turkish, and I am righteous and hardworking,' But all those things did not actually turn us into Turks. This system is somehow creating fake personalities.

Possible or not, they tried to turn me into a Nick McNugget. (Nick)

The marginalized did not create identity politics: their identities have been forced on them by dominant groups, and politics is the most effective method of revolt.

It's so important to raise people to grow up to be who they are and not be forced to be who they're not. What an awful thing to do to people - it's like being in prison.

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

When we attach ourselves to national identities, then we enter into a cycle of conflict. I didn't choose where I was born or who to be or what people would call me.

To force something that was not organic to who I am was tough on me, and so I can relate to all those girls and guys out there going through the same thing.

Without much accuracy, with strangely little love at all, your family will decide for you exactly who you are, and they'll keep nudging, coaxing, poking you until you've changed into that very simple shape.

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun." "I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?). I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand: WE WUZ PUSHED.

One doesn't want one's identity coerced.

Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair.

Being a sex symbol was rather like being a convict.

It's not like we wanted to talk about the fact that we're gay all the time, but the world has forced it to be an issue.

Most African Americans, if given a chance, would have chosen to be 'just Americans' ever since the first of us was brought here to Jamestown colony in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed. But that choice has never been left up to us.

Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.

Sometimes I have no choice but to wear my hair and I try to make it look as normal as possible, but no, there's no chance.

I feel like someone is pressing me into a mold that does not fit my body, forcing me intothe wrong shape.