Quotes About Prejudice

We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious.

I grew up thinking I was inferior to white-skinned people. And as a child if you are conditioned like this, it becomes a part of your upbringing that you believe that probably because I look like this, I won't get anywhere in life.

Being a woman of color, I can truthfully state that I don't feel safe around those who are sworn to honor and uphold the law.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

I have a class prejudice - against the upper class, which is foolish.

I was really upset because I was branded as an enemy alien when I'm an American.

It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

I very, very, very rarely lose my temper. I do get cross sometimes when encountering something that I feel is improper, that I feel is lacking in justice and equity, and this all sounds very pompous and over the top - but these are the things that really upset me: intolerance, prejudice etc. I suppose in more mundane matters, I'm impatient.

I remember in 'Law of Desire,' where I played a homosexual, that people were more upset that I kissed a man on the mouth than I killed a man. It's interesting to see how people can pardon you for murdering a man, but they can't pardon you for kissing one.

For instance, one big issue in hip hop is the gay thing. It's 2013, and it's a shame that, to this day, that topic still gets people all excited. It's crazy. And it makes me upset that this topic even matters when it comes to hip hop, because it makes it seem like everybody in hip hop is small-minded or stupid - and that's not the case.

With all the people hating and hurting each other, I don't understand how people could get upset about people of the same sex caring for each other.

A lot of black women still carry a lot of pain when they see black men with women who aren't black, and that's really unfortunate that that could make us so upset. It has to do with self esteem.

Discounting the ineffably repetitive homophobic barbs that I receive most days, Twitter trolls' most common gripe against me appears to be that I am 'posh.' Contrary to their unshakeable view, I was not born into the upstairs world.

Whitey is uptight about offending blacks without really knowing what offends blacks.

A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.

I'm aware that if I make a country album and release it, and it gets on the Grammys, the Grammys are going to put it in the Urban category. Just my blackness automatically sets it in there.

More often than what you're suggesting, I find people are surprised that I have an urban side to me.

A lot of people have read the Mira Grant books who are not urban fantasy readers, and they would never have picked up a book with an urban fantasist's name on the cover, but then they go on to read my urban fantasy and like it.

I don't like the word 'urban' because I think it's a bit of a generalisation and they use it to class music, but I don't think it's a word that necessarily classes music.

In the last 'Batman' movie, they told me that I couldn't get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren't 'going urban.' It was like, 'What does that have to do with anything?'

It's only in acting where I've heard in auditions, 'Can you black it up a little bit? Can you make her a little bit more urban?' And it's just like, 'What?' I don't even know the word for that.

It's never said out aloud, or in so many words, but for many urban, upper caste Indians, 'the backwards' are precisely that - citizens of the hinterland, ungainly and otherworldly - an inconvenient blemish on their shining, gleaming future.

When you say rap or Hip Hop, people expect it to be just urban or black. And I don't really feel like you should really put a face on it.