Quotes About Diversity

I think the real understanding comes when we recognize our humanity in each other. That's not just between blacks and whites. That's between all religions as well.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.

When I was born in 1959, the hospital in which I arrived had separate floors for black babies and white babies, and it was then illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states.

Yes, we become stronger when black and whites, Latino, Asian American, Native American, when all of us stand together.

In west London where I live, white people are a minority. In the area I am in, which is the borough of Brent, whites are less than 50%.

I think Dr. King would be pleased to see the number of elected officials of color - African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and progressive whites.

Blacks are tired of seeing whites saying, 'I understand you.' You need a black to direct a black film.

There are so many families who do not come up in a traditional household. African Americans, Latins, and, I'm sure, whites as well, but there are a lot of men missing in African American communities and in Latin communities.

Embracing cultural distance, cultural distance nationalism, means in effect taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites than non-whites.

I grew up around whites, I grew up around Jews, I grew up around blacks, I grew up around Hispanics. We moved a lot.

Treat everyone with the same respect that you want to be treated with. That's going to take a collective group of people to do it. There's not one individual that's going to change it. It's going to take multiple people getting out, learning who each other are and loving each other no matter what their political views or what their background is.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Allah says in the Qur'an not to despise one another. So the criterion in Islam is not color or social status. It's who is most righteous. If I go to a mosque - and I'm a basketball player with money and prestige - if I go to a mosque and see an imam, I feel inferior. He's better than me. It's about knowledge.

I want to be judged by who I am, not what I am. I mean, I am Johnny Weir. Judge me the way you see me, love me the way you see me, hate me the way you see me.

I'm not a Barbie doll, I'm just a multidimensional human being who likes to make things.

May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians give strength to you to carry out your noble idea.

Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

If I think something is heinous, but the person feels amazing in it, who am I to critique it? If they think that those bell-bottom, cropped, shredded jeans look good, then good for them!

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn't marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

So the point is, I don't have a right to tell anybody what's right or wrong about their lives. Who am I to tell you at any given moment of the day what would be right for you?

I'm not a sexist. I believe if a man can to go work all his life, a woman can. Who am I to say, 'Don't do that because you're a girl?'

I always felt culturally adrift as a child because I'm mixed race. I've had to deal with that since I was little. Who am I? What makeup do I have? What are the black and the white?