Quotes About Representation

The world is always struggling to express itself. Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings. They depend upon others. That is what genius is for. One man expresses their desires for them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play. Sometimes nature does it in a face—it makes the face representative of all desire.

Some of my earliest heroes were congresswomen like Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan.

How many black people are there in the higher echelons of any industry? We can talk about journalism, we can talk about politics. So why should football be any different?

Journalists said they had never seen so many funny women as leads when we did 'Hotwives' - we had a cast of seven very funny women. That doesn't happen.

One of the great joys of my life post-'Friends' has been being approached by Asian women who have told me how much it meant to see an Asian face on their TV screen when they were growing up.

I long to play a judge. I long to play a lesbian woman. I long to play a councilman, someone with some chutzpah.

As I have consistently recommended, we desperately need to find more black judges, particularly females, who are chronically underrepresented in our courts across London and the U.K.

I want people - boys and girls - to be sat at home watching me alongside the likes of Rio Ferdinand or Frank Lampard, thinking that it's normal, that we all know what we're talking about, and that they're not judging me at home just because I'm a female.

I have heard stories of how the Malayali jury members trying to play down actors from our own state, stating various reasons.

Men should be able to see themselves in female characters and female strength, just as much as women are able to see themselves in male characters.

'Diverse' shouldn't be an actionable thing - it should just be.

When I talk, it shouldn't just be black girls listening.

There are so few roles out there. And even if it is a film that could be led by a black actress, how many times is that film going to get funded? Let's just be real. But it's not just black people. It's Asians, it's Hispanic people if you're not Salma Hayek. It's hard. It's hard to get films funded.

When they speak about 'We the people...,' we the people have to have a voice. It can't just be the establishment voice.

It used to just be a SAG card, and then you got an AFTRA card. I got my AFTRA card doing a commercial in Atlanta. I got my SAG card doing a beer commercial from 100 years ago; it was one of the first national commercials with a family in it that was black and normal, and I played the daughter.

I think the way comedy is represented on screen is it's either all fart jokes - and it's just laughter for the sake of laughter - or it's one of those things where it's just kind of very preachy, very heavy-handed.

When we have gay characters on TV, they're just, kind of, gay for the sake of being gay. That's their personality. That's their whole backstory, that's their future story, that's their present story - it's just gay. Nobody's just gay.

I think about what I grew up seeing, what I didn't see growing up, and what it felt like when I did see someone who I thought that I could relate to, just living their life on screen.

Being a big black man in China in the mainland, walking down the street, you have everyone looking at you, 'Basketball?' They don't really see a lot of us around, maybe on TV, so they're just looking.

I think that in L.A., one thing that nobody will ever talk about is, for instance, how just one in five kids in L.A. County is white, so when you're looking out there, it's a very brown city.

I'm a writer and a feminist of color, and I've written complex, powerful women for my entire career. I'm just one voice, but there are many others like me.

I never really thought that anyone thought there was just one kind of Republican woman.

The American girl doesn't look just one kind of way - not in 2018, not ever.

Scarface is just a character. He's just something to look at. He's not nothing to be.