Quotes About Representation

We've all known how to smile since the beginning of time. We've all gotten married since the beginning of time. We've all had romance, glamour, and splendor. Representing that is incredibly important, because period drama for people who aren't white shouldn't mean only spotlighting trauma.

Barack Obama's official nomination as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer was a very poignant moment for millions of Americans. As the first non-white major party nominee, Obama is carrying a big load on his shoulders. He's holding the hopes and dreams of a lot of folks who thought the presidency was only reserved for white men.

For our white members, voting is something they have done for hundreds of years. But for us, it is not such a traumatic thing, because we have never participated in an election.

Growing up, I watched softball and U.S.A .softball, and that was my goal of being able to represent my country and wear the red, white, and blue out there, and I think it is one of the highest honors to be able to go out there and compete for your country, and it was something so very special, and it was everything I dreamt of and more.

As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.

After Obama became president, I realized that black people could not have put him in the White House - it had to be a collective effort of everybody in the country.

We need women who are at the head of a boardroom, like at the head of the White House, at the head of kind of major scientific enterprises so that little girls everywhere can then think, you know what? I can do that, I want to do that, I will do that.

Under President Barack Obama, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has been invited into the White House and given a seat at the table. Hispanics are serving in unprecedented numbers at the highest levels of this administration, including in the Cabinet.

Pick somebody who knows what it's like to live on an average income and to deal with the problems that most Americans face. Pick somebody who's traveled this country and who will remember who put him in the White House - not to be a king but to be a public servant.

The average guy doesn't have an army of lobbyists and lawyers working on his behalf every day in the White House.

It was easier to forget, or be dismissive about, transgender issues when there weren't transgender staffers or interns walking the halls of the White House.

A White House dinner is the American family assembled, from labor leaders to billionaires, actors, architects, academicians and athletes.

It's time to replace career politicians with citizen's politicians. It's time to elect people who are going to stand up to the Washington elite and stand up to a White House and Congress hell-bent on ramming socialism down our throat.

It's passing strange that Obama, carried to a second term by women, blacks and Latinos, chooses to give away the plumiest Cabinet and White House jobs to white dudes.

'The Butler' has virtually nothing in common with its source material, the life of White House butler Gene Allen, except for the fact that the main character of the film and Allen were both black butlers in the White House.

I think that many black people thought this would be a wonderful and extraordinary thing, for a black family to occupy the White House. Not only black people; a lot of white people thought that, too, but particularly black people.

Trump seems to think he can win the White House with only the white vote. I believe that the only way to win the White House is with the Latino vote. If the Republican candidate cannot get 33 percent of it, he cannot win the White House.

What motivated me as much as anything was to show the racists that a black man could bring pride and honour to Britain.

'Hotel Rwanda' is an American product, not a Rwandan one, made primarily for American audiences.

If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice.

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

The primary reason that I'd be here or that Don Payne Jr. would be here is for you to know that members of Congress actually exist and are human.

A prime minister's job is to make sure the government works for those who have elected him, and not for big corporations.

Asking for a royally appointed prime minister is undemocratic. It is, pardon me, a mess. It is irrational.