Intersectional Experiences Quotes

I don't think that everything on Broadway relates to us, and I think that's why we as black people don't always go to Broadway shows, but shows like 'What's on the Hearts of Men' has a lot of issues that can relate to black families, and that's why I enjoy it.

If I have no idea how my race shapes me, I am probably not going to be open to any feedback about how your race shapes you.

I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.

It's called 'Dear White People,' but really, it's about these black characters and how they are involved or not involved in a racial scandal in ways that might surprise them and others, right?

A guy can try something and not be successful, and it's just about him. But when you're a person of color, when you're a woman, when you're a woman of color in particular, you mess it up, and other people get tarred by your decision-making. You never act alone.

I'm half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That's why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I've seen so many.

The black immigrant experience in the U.S. must be understood not in contrast to the African American experience but as an integral part of it.

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

There are a lot of communities within the Asian Pacific Islander umbrella that are predominantly more working-class or lower class, and those stories haven't been told yet, so my hope is that we see the gamut of perspectives.

I was born in the UK and brought up by my single mother in Ghana, where being black was unexceptional. As an adult, I learnt to succeed in white Britain, going from a state sixth form, to Oxford university, to a well-paid job in the City, to becoming the first black Conservative MP to attend the cabinet.

When I looked at 'Dear White People,' you have four African-American students who are all very different and who are trying to figure out who they are. They're dealing with identity issues and crises. That is exciting to me, to see African-American young people on a page, on a screen, who are so diverse and whose stories are all so different.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I remember watching 'Boyz n the Hood,' and there is a scene where Cuba Gooding, Jr. gets pressed against a car by a police officer, and he starts crying because it's so humiliating. I remember thinking in that moment that I could totally identify with him, and I'm a little white kid from Canada.

With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'

I certainly think that my music is a response to my experience as a person who doesn't identify as straight, as a person who grew up American.

Feeling trapped in identity isn't just the purview of women and minorities.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

As I've written more, and as other Indian American voices have grown around me, I strive harder to find experiences that are unique yet a meaningful and resonant part of the American story.

A lot of my friends - I am the only white person in their circle. Being able to hear other perspectives besides the white conservative approach has really given me a perspective that I want to share and challenge people to think about.

While I might not have a specific experience that is fully American, there is still a knowledge, something that I logically understand as a black woman and a black woman who is existing in America and a black woman who is in the diaspora that are just known quantities that I think anyone can relate to who is black.

My name's Mohamed, a lot of people know I'm Muslim, but I'm here because of my football talents, not because I'm Muslim.

My family, friends and community members rarely spoke about race relations, or how people from different races have different experiences growing up in America. Race was a taboo topic.

I love telling the experience of a black male in America, but modern, not always having to go back to a period piece to remind people where we come from. It's more a modern sense of where we are today and where we want to go in the future. So I try to choose projects somewhere around that space.

As an individual, and I have to say as a person of color, the thing about being an 'other' in America is I really feel like you're bilingual. I'm from a small town in Wisconsin, but even when I'm in New York and I'm working for MSNBC or CNN, you're used to being the only black person in the room.

I wish reporters were more in tune to the difference between the Asian experience and the Asian-American experience. I think often they lump the two together and think that when I talk about Asian-American narratives that they can cite 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' or 'Mulan' as proof of concept when it's a different experience.

Because when you have all white men in the writers' room trying to tell the perspective of cultural appropriation or what it's like to be black or Asian in America and not necessarily knowing what it's like, that's when everything gets mixed up.