I don't like the term 'colour-blind' - because I don't want people to be blind to my colour.
Interpretation
Embracing one's identity is important, and being 'colour-blind' undermines the significance of cultural diversity.
Ruth Negga's quote challenges the notion of being 'colour-blind' in society, implying that it is essential to recognize and appreciate individual identities and differences rather than ignoring them. By advocating for awareness of color and culture, Negga emphasizes the richness that diversity brings to human experience and the necessity for dialogue around these topics rather than a false equivalence that ignores important aspects of identity.
In practice
In a speech on cultural awareness at a community center.
When I was a kid in Ireland, there were not very many black people. I was very much like the strange brown thing, intriguing and cute. I didn't experience racism there. The first time I did was in London. It was that moment that you realize you're black. A kind of lifting of the veil.
What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, 'Oh, she couldn't possibly be that.'
I don't know why women aren't allowed to have the same sort of breadth and scope and flaws of men.
When you connect to someone on a human level, and you get to know about them, you can begin to love the things that make them different. That's when fear dissipates, and that's when we can live the life that we're all supposed to be living.
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live.
It is the Germans who are responsible for the fact that I became a fabricator of arms. If not for them, I would have constructed agricultural machines. (...) If someone asks me how I can sleep at night knowing that my arms have killed millions of people, I respond that I have no problem sleeping, my conscience is clean. I constructed arms to defend my country.
The book, 'Citizen,' begins with daily encounters, little moments, places where language reveals how racism determines how we interact.
I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme. I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.
Let's worship Divinity, but understand the divinity we worship is beyond our comprehension.
The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
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