Opportunity Denial Quotes

I struggled with working with producers because no one openly wanted to give me a chance to rap on their beats. That's just honest talk. No one really wanted to take that risk.

I was not bitter by not being allowed to play in the major leagues. I just said, 'The time has not come.'

Segregations, by which I mean people living in a certain area, was a planned system. It was made that way. And what you have is a system in which people are there to be exploited. They're right there waiting for it. A community of people who've been denied wealth, denied wealth-building opportunities, are right there. And the banks went right after them.

All the things that you would have thought would have made me a professional A1 criminal... wrong. I decided that was too lazy and easy, and because of the way British society is, quite frankly you were denied an education, so I got one of my own.

As I got older, I had to learn to not have people speak for me. It was the first time I recognized, 'Oh, sometimes people are going to condescend to me because I'm a woman, or sometimes people aren't going to give me opportunities because of the way I look.'

But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.

We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.

The basis for sustainable progress is legal protections grounded in an awareness of how identity has been used to deny opportunity.

It's amazing how uncreative some people can be in this industry. They look at you and go, 'She's not right for the role'... but you've got to give someone a chance to show they're an actress. It's very frustrating.

If the CEO is not going to give you a fair chance, you're probably not going to win.

I can't point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother's ability and energy.

There are countless fantastic actors out there who are being denied the opportunity to play Broadway because they're not a name, and I think that's kind of wrong.

Generalizations about the "way women are" and estimates of what is appropriate for most women no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.

Don't ever admit that the world has not given you an opportunity

I am trained, and I did do 'The Nutcracker' in its right form, but at the time, they told me I was black and I'd never be in 'Swan Lake.' I went through all those prejudices in the ballet community, and I still emerged wonderfully trained and found my way to Alvin Ailey where there were familiar faces.