A Quote by Margaret Cho
Comedians and people in general have a cultural right to talk about their own culture and race.
Related Quotes
You don't get white comedians being asked to talk about their race in their shows. I should be given the same agency to talk about what I want to talk about.
I talk about race and culture, and that's what my fans respond to. If you grew up in an environment where race and culture were never an issue for you, or where you don't see the humor in our so-called differences, then you might not respond to what I'm doing.
It's the culture, not the blood. If you can go anywhere in the world and adopt these babies and put them into households that were already assimilated in America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby with as much patriotism and love of country as any other baby. It's not about race. It's never been about race. In fact the struggles across this planet, we describe them as race, they're not race. They're culture based. It's a clash of culture, not the race. Sometimes that race is used as an identifier.
The indigenous peoples understand that they have to recover their cultural identity, or to live it if they have already recovered it. They also understand that this is not a favor or a concession, but simply their natural right to be recognized as belonging to a culture that is distinct from the Western culture, a culture in which they have to live their own faith.
I'm not like most comedians. I don't deal with just heckles - I'm also dealing with threats and anger. Here I am, a brown person on stage being quite blunt. I talk about white privilege; I talk about U.S. imperialistic practices; I talk about colonialism. I'm not saying things that are easy for people to laugh at.
There is a linear way in which black comedians are expected to talk about race by all audiences - black people are like this, white people are like this - and it really is hard to break through that. I never was doing it that way.
One thing I found very interesting about comedians around the world was their knowledge of stuff outside of their own culture and comfort zone. That's not very common in the States. We produce our own soft power, which is pop culture, but we rarely try to absorb and learn information from other cultures and countries.
You go, well you can't joke about race. Well if you're from a different race and that's your experience of the world and you want to talk about that, then fine. Or you can't talk about disability, but disabled comics can talk about that.
Coldplay's 'Hymn for the Weekend' video featuring Beyonce is already caught in a heated conversation about cultural appreciation of Indian religion and culture versus cultural appropriation of that culture for the western gaze.
I never like to talk about my own politics, but whether you're left, right or center, the 2008 race was definitely good drama.
You know, you can talk about race, you can talk about sex, you can talk about your biopsy. But when you get into class, people kind of clench up.
I want to sometimes talk about race and sometimes not talk about race, but mainly just do silly voices and pretend to be like strange people, and having people be like, 'That's fine, we accept that.'
[Cultural departments] don't care about culture. Maybe they're the furthest from the people who understand culture.
General managers - I like to talk about the 'golden gut': general managers that not only can have a sense for the players that are going to perform beyond what people expect and get team chemistry right, but they also have to be able to make trades.
CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
If you don't address race, then people are like, 'Why don't you talk about the elephant in the room?' But you have to do it right. It can't be gimmicky.
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