Quotes About Inclusion

There's no stopping same-sex dancing couples. I don't understand how people being happy can affect others so much - just let them be.

There are so many things to talk about between black people, Hispanic people, white people, gay people, men, women, it's all based on fear. We all have fears, this thing that stops us from embracing as we are one. We are never going to be one. People are messed up, but humor lets us see how ignorant we can be.

You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.

As an actor of color, I was overlooked at every possible opportunity. I was given roles that were almost not roles. It was, like, Scared Asian Guy. Whether I was a scared Asian guy in front of a computer or a scared Asian guy getting robbed in the grocery store, I always played these pathetic, low-status characters.

When I was first starting out in the industry in the early '90s, gay love stories were relegated to limited-release films that were hidden deep in the back of Blockbuster video stores.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.

I do think that the success, although still not complete... in the recognition of equal rights... to all Americans, regardless of color, creed and so forth, was also one of the best stories we've had to report.

There are literally hundreds of stories about women of color that haven't been told that are amazing, fantastic, better than anything else.

'Crazy Rich Asians' has been compared to 'Black Panther,' but I feel like that's a false equivalency. The idea that there's only this film for Asians and that film for African Americans - it's so binary. I don't think it's like that at all. There should be and will be many films and many stories. Hopefully this just opens the floodgates.

I'm ready to take the world by storm and have them look at me and say, 'Deaf people can dance.'

In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.

All I've ever done since I was 17 is tell stories. You know, I'm a storyteller. And that's what I'm going to keep on doing, especially now, kind of embracing and making sure that we tell immigration.

We know there needs to be diversity in storytellers telling their own stories. I think there's a beautiful forward movement in that direction with McQueen telling '12 Years A Slave,' with Coogler telling 'Fruitvale,' and with Daniels telling 'The Butler.'

I formed this thing called the Half Foundation, and what I tried to do is quantify hiring practices in Hollywood. Half the population is women, so half of the storytellers should be women. Fifty percent of all the directors in my company are women, and it will forever be that way.

When we talk about LGBT characters on TV we're talking about the entire rainbow, and that includes trans people, and that includes non-binary people, people of color, women, differently-abled people. There is so much opportunity for storytelling there, and I hope that we continue to see more of that.

There's a lack of diversity amongst executives in the position of greenlighting a film who feel that their stories are being told. If there's a diversity at the executive level, then we'll have diversity of the storytelling process.

I'd say 50 on men is like 33 on women in Hollywood. The standards - it's just the way we do our storytelling. And I hope it will change, because I think it's dumb.

I'm more compelled as an artist to see diversification than I am to keep watching an Anglo point of view in storytelling.

We promote Asian storytelling - not just Asian stories but Asian people in stories with the full spectrum of the human experience. When you say, 'Oh, it's not enough attention on Asians. It's more black and white,' that game becomes like you're playing the discrimination Olympics.

I think as you have a more diverse group of people working in the industry, you automatically have more diverse storytelling. That's definitely to be celebrated for sure.

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.

I certainly believe that all of my friends should have the right, as Marc and I did, to marry their best friend. I certainly expect my straight friends to help us achieve that for all New Yorkers, for all Americans, and for the children that, at least, Marc and I hope to have someday.

Gay rights is not something most of us think about - because most of us happen to have been born straight.