The capacity for humans to come up with ever-increasingly granular in-group versus out-group demarcations is truly breathtaking.
I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.
One of the things I had to really wrap my head around is I have no control over what people call me: advocate, activist, gay, Filipino, undocumented person, gay person with an Asian face and Latino name.
I'm not a player! I'm the girlfriend type! I always have girlfriends.
Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.
To be very blunt, I am not really that concerned with what labels get associated with somebody.
Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn’t Asian either
When someone is in our tribe, I think it's particularly easier for us to tell them apart, because we're used to their facial features.
No, I'm not feminist. I'm not, not a feminist.
One of the sad commentaries on the way women are viewed in our society is that we have to fit one category. I have never felt that I had to be in one category.
We are neurologically hardwired to seek out people like ourselves. We start forming cliques as soon as we're old enough to know what acceptance feels like. We bond together based on anything that we can - music preference, race, gender, the block that we grew up on.
People assume that I'm an aristocrat, but I don't really feel part of any class.
Society cannot continue to disable themselves through their need to categorize people or make assumptions as to another individual's abilities.
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole 'Super Bowl' generalization of our world - You're on this side, I'm on that side; you're a Republican, I'm a Democrat; you're country music, I'm rock music.
Nobody likes being told who or what they are.
The world is split into two halves: the bacon, and the bacon eaters.
We've been fighting our whole lives to say we're just human beings like everyone else. When we start separating ourselves in our work, that doesn't help the cause. I've heard it for years: 'How do you feel being a black filmmaker?' I'm not a black filmmaker, I'm a filmmaker. I'm a black man, I have black children. But I'm just a filmmaker.
Once you get labeled, there's nothing you can do about it.
If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don't see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.
Historically, unfortunately, race seems to be the major division that humanity has imposed on itself, a way of subdividing into smaller groups.
In every high school, there is a clique.
It's interesting, gender versus race. I think people say that to women more: 'Oh, you're my favorite female.' They wouldn't say 'favorite black comic.'
When it comes to the liberal agenda, it's more important to pigeonhole people than it is to speak the truth.
I don't even know whether I am a savarna or not, I am a Kayasth, so I am not Brahmin or Kshatriya or Vaishya or Shudra.
