Quotes About Inclusion

First and foremost, I'm an athlete. And I'm an Olympian. I'm not a gay Olympian. I'm just an Olympian that's also gay. I don't mind reading that - like, 'gay Olympian Adam Rippon.' It's fine. I hope that, in a way, it makes it easier for other young kids who are gay. If they go to the Olympics, they can just be called Olympians.

To all the young kids of color - and not so young - people who want to use their voices, who are thinking, 'This seems difficult because I don't see myself out there,' I tell you, you must be persistent because we need you. We need you so, so badly.

When I was young, kids who were more Native American than me would call me 'white boy.' To my white friends, I was 'that Indian kid.'

I think the fashion industry and the media industry in general have a responsibility to make sure that they celebrate the rich differences in all our backgrounds to make sure we don't fall into the trap of reducing beauty to one specific mold.

The gay community just recognizes what their closets are and we straight have to spend years trying to figure out which closet we are trapped in.

Feeling trapped in identity isn't just the purview of women and minorities.

Some kids would deliberately knock shoulders with me while passing by. Students from other classes would then put trash all over my seat, and the kids in my class would try to clean it up for me.

The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart credit for that. He traveled to every state in the country. He really made people with disabilities understand that they had some political power.

My mom was concerned that us four little black girls have a really well-balanced life. She wanted us to be around people like us, but we also went to private school and traveled all the time. Now I fit in most places because I've been most places.

So when people used to call me 'chinki' I thought that okay maybe my mother is Chinese so they are calling me that. It was only in my 20s, when I travelled to the north-east that I realised that it was racist and that the north-easterners were called this and they were not considered Indians just because of the way they look.

In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.

Rather than allowing Roma, Travellers and homeless people to be picked off, all those of us who fear the criminalisation of trespass should join forces with them, protecting their rights while we defend our own.

Right about when I turned 13, I realized that women could be jockeys, from my travels to the racetrack with my dad.

I learned at an early age how to traverse the white world, the white-dominant world. I learned, and I was successful at it. I learned the nuances - I learned how to act, how to be - but I always was conscious and aware of my blackness.

I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

We can never completely fulfill the promise of this treasured republic if we are blinded by color.

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.

It's racist to teach children to treat other children differently because of their skin color.

I think outing people is fear-based: the fear that if we don't out them, it will make things harder for all of us. It's important to treat people with love.

I chose to treat the homosexuality like I would treat any other form of sexuality.

If we are Russian citizens, treat us as Russian citizens. We want equality and justice.

There is no room on the federal bench for a judge who does not treat all people as equal before the law.

People tend to treat people with disabilities sort of like they're aliens from another planet. It doesn't come from a bad place; it comes from a place of, 'I have no idea what this disability entails, and I don't want to offend anyone or make them feel awful.'