Racial Performance Quotes

Ali was actually able to fool some people into thinking that Foreman was actually a white man.

I am whatever you want me to be and I can't control that. My experience is my experience, but I can't really claim anything. I know when I take my wig off at night and I have to twist my hair up, I'm black. But I don't get too personal most of the time.

I'm not a Rachel Dolezal. I don't fake tan; I don't have the cornrows, I don't misappropriate. I just want to be Beyonce.

Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.

I was never a white guy pretending to be black. Not once, ever, did it occur to me that I was being phony or fraudulent or fake. Quite the opposite - I always believed I was living the truest form of my self.

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.

I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian community, and most of my friends had blonde hair and blue eyes. So I was always straightening my hair, wearing colored contacts, and I never tanned, if I could help it.

Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of time that they just thought I was.

I remember the first thing I did when I found out I was illegal was to get rid of my thick Filipino accent. I figured that I had to talk white and talk black at the same time, like Charlie Rose and Dr. Dre. If I can talk white and black then no one is ever going to think that I'm "illegal."

The genius of Rachel Dolezal's transracial achievement is that it has nearly limitless applications. Rachel is taking 'the power of positive thinking' to a whole new level.

With my face paint on, I don't look like a regular black dude.

The white audiences thought I was white, my features being what they are, and at every performance I'd have to take off my gloves to prove I was a spade.

As a white teen, I was very drawn to hip-hop culture, almost to the point of disappearing in it - there was a sense of having no sense of authenticity except this one that wasn't mine.

At one point, I bought brown contacts because people told me I wasn't Latin enough to play Latin, and I'm Puerto Rican. I went and bought brown contacts just so I could go in and look more Latino... but that was something that I've dealt with in this business.

Well, I think that I have a complicated relationship with whiteness because oftentimes, I pass as white, and I recognize that. I would be disingenuous to pretend that I don't pass as white.

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

I consciously learned and performed my race like a teacher's pet in an advanced placement course on black masculinity.

Don't fault me for wearing a 20-inch blond wig - it doesn't mean I want to be a white person.

I've done a handful of voiceover and on-camera jobs where I've been asked to 'be blacker.' That's code for sassier, more ghetto, more neck rolls and snaps.

For me, I've struggled with that when auditioning. Sometimes I get the feedback that I'm not white enough or I'm not black enough, and that can be really frustrating in that sense.