Quotes About Representation

I think that TV and film are very important mediums to show what people of all races, ethnicities, sexual orientations can do, and I think that, as women, we are still in the process of proving what we can do, what we can accomplish, and who we are.

My African-American friends thought it was cool that I was racing. It's not like we had any role models out there to look up to, so everyone understood I was doing something very different.

The big, radical thing that I'm trying to do is to portray Latinas as complex human beings.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

We're looking to rebrand L.A. Not in some sort of radical way, but we've forgotten to sell this city, internationally and nationally... it's important for us to say who we are.

I'm not saying that what the radio plays isn't good. My issue is with what they don't play. You can play Jay-Z, but why don't you play Jurassic 5? You can play Nas and Nelly, but why don't you play J-Live? I want to open up the door to how it was back in the day.

You don't really hear a female perspective on the radio, because so many of the songs are being written by men.

If you're going to make a film about rage in 2018, 2017... If you're going to make a film about revenge and anger, I feel like that has to be a film about women. I don't really want to watch a film about angry men. I've seen way too many of those.

Flags say something. You put a rainbow flag on your windshield, and you're saying something.

The U.S. is a rainbow of people with an endless scope of stories. My hope is that writing stories about people of color will become instinctual rather than something to be pushed for.

I take any opportunity I can to raise our country's flag really high and get some shining positive light on things over there.

When a member of the House moves over to the Senate, he raises the IQ of both bodies.

I'm going to be the kind of congressperson where I'm going to be at rallies with the people, fighting for justice and being present and showing them that they have a fighter and a champion in Congress with them and for them.

I'm happy to represent myself as a black woman in front of America and I'm happy for America to rally behind me and see what it's like for me to be on this journey to find love. Honestly, it's not going to be that different from any other season of 'The Bachelorette.'

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

The project of Ralph Ellison's 'Invisible Man' is exactly that: to assert the beautiful, bountiful, chaotic complexity of one black American male. And, by extension, all black American males.

I've never seen Ralph Lauren, Rick Owens, or Raf Simons described as white designers. They are just designers.

Women do have better roles to play, more characters are being written. For instance, Surpriya Pathak's character in 'Ram Leela' or Neena Gupta's part in 'Badhaai Ho'.'

If you were to turn on the TV in 1986, '87, you wouldn't see anybody having, I guess, a low-to-middle-income person of color experience. And you definitely wouldn't have a young LGBT person or their story told. The experience of being invisible in our culture has ramifications that I don't think any of us can really understand.

When I walk for a designer, I walk the ramp as Vijender Singh, the boxer. I believe that by doing so, boxing will at least, in some way, get promoted in our entertainment industry. Plus, if cricketers can, why can't I?

With any sort of minority, issues of ostracization or misrepresentation are clearly rampant. It's just so deeply rooted in our culture, and there are so many levels that it trickles down from.

When I first ran for office in 2010, I was 32 years old. The average age in Congress was 69. I was a brown woman whose name was Reshma Saujani - a name most people couldn't pronounce. And there was never a South Asian woman who had ever run for United States Congress before.

I want to be known as the mayor who happens to be Latino who made a difference. I ran to make a difference.

I ran because somebody had to do it first. In this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run for president, but that has never really been true.