Quotes About Identity

I think when you're put into a completely different situation and environment, you really see who you are. You're not affected by what's around you. You are who you are.

I really wanted people to see that just because I'm successful doesn't mean I'm not going to be affected by racism.

Young people get lured into love and affection but should not be forced to change religion.

Because if I am someone else for so many months, it affects me, physically, in my brain, in my being. So then I have to take care of that, and make myself more like me again.

The 'Playboy' affiliation will probably stick for the rest of my life to some extent.

Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.

We are not America. We are Afghanistan.

The future is Afghanistan.

Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.

So this is why I'm always say happy that somebody mentions Rwanda, because behind Rwanda, we have Africa.

I'm an African American.

I am not an African. I am an American.

I am an African and I am very proud of that.

The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American.

Because I am an African, I am a Ghanaian.

I am a black man inside and outside and you are white men on the outside, but inside, you are Africans like me.

There are some people who are happy to be African writers. They are pan-Africanists. I'm not a pan-Africanist. I think African countries have a lot in common. But we are also very different.

The humanity that is given to other people isn't given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.

I am African-American, and I am a proud African-American. I just don't like to put myself in a box and say, 'I'm an African-American actress.' I am an American actress, and I can do any kind of role.

Even though I'm an African-American woman, it's not different from any other Bachelorette.

Like I said, being an African-American man, you can tell there's two Americas we're living in. They don't want us to be equal.

There are a lot of things that people learn and live through culture first, and politics comes afterward.

You don't make a decision about being a writer. There was a point, aged 21, when it became clear that this is who I am. The choice is how good you are going to be at it and how hard you are going to work.

For many, hair is just hair. It's something you grow, shape, adapt, adorn, and cut. But my hair has always been so much more than what's on my head. It's a marker of how free I felt in my body, how comfortable I was with myself, and how much agency I had to control my body and express myself with it.