A Quote by Cliff Curtis

People were nicer to me when I was in the arts. I experienced extreme racism in small-town New Zealand. Racism which really went away when I got into the arts. — © Cliff Curtis
People were nicer to me when I was in the arts. I experienced extreme racism in small-town New Zealand. Racism which really went away when I got into the arts.
I have experienced racism in this country. My children have experienced racism in this country. I wouldn't say America is against me. It is not an either/or proposition. But there are some people who hold fast to certain religious beliefs.
I never want to position myself where I seem like an ambassador of anti-racism. I am fortunate enough to say that I've never experienced extreme amounts of racism, but a lot of my friends do.
My mother and father taught me about black excellence and dynasty. They experienced racism personally, and when something like that happens to you and not around you, you develop a different perception than someone who has never experienced racism a day in their lives.
The way racism works in Canada, it's very subtle. You may feel you're a victim of racism or have experienced racism, but you can't necessarily prove it - unless you get a [white] friend to go check out that rental, go check out that job, whatever. Unless you're willing to really dig to prove you're a victim of racism, it might be difficult to do that. And so what you're dealing with then is feeling, it's emotion.
I think some people feel that if you question the reality of race, you're questioning racism; you're saying racism isn't real. Racism is real because people actually believe race is real. We'd have to really let go of the 500-year-old idea of race as a worldview in order to undo racism.
And what is the Republican solution to these outrageous [racial] inequalities? There isn't one. And that's the point. Denying racism is the new racism. To not acknowledge those statistics, to think of that as a 'black problem' and not an American problem. To believe, as a majority of FOX viewers do, that reverse-racism is a bigger problem than racism, that's racist.
The people who fund the arts, provide the arts, and research the arts have all produced a consensus about the value of what they do, which hardly anyone challenges. But do the numbers add up? For all the claims made about the arts, how accurate are they?
In the Trump era, it's way more obvious extreme racism exists. But there are still a lot of people who think, 'We don't have a racist bone in our bodies.' We have to face the racism in ourselves.
I think that there's more jealousy in sports than racism, really. I think racism exists in the works, but when I faced racism in hockey, a lot of times from jealousy, because when I was young, I was always one of the better players. And I think a lot of people were threatened by that.
I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no guidance in the high school at all. It was a mill town, and I never knew anyone who made their living from the arts. When you did go away to college, you went away to be something - an engineer, or a teacher, or a chemist.
If you take racism away from certain people - I mean, vitriolic racism as well as the sort of social racist - if you take that away, they may have to face something really terrible, misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are.
When I experienced racism here in my own country, I was not prepared for it. I had never heard the word racism.
Miles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.
Colorblind racism is the new racial music most people dance to, the 'new racism' is subtle, institutionalized and seemingly nonracial.
My whole childhood, that made my skin curl. I was looking for something authentic. I think that drove me into the arts, I really do. That really did it. The only other thing that made me survive, as a human being, was getting into the arts. I was surrounded by people that were very bright and they invited you in. They were gracious. So, it gave me a great education.
People don't talk about small-town racism in Illinois or upstate New York. They're like, 'It's the South.' And it is. It's there. But it's everywhere. But everywhere, there are also amazing people.
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