Justin Simien Quotes

#1. Racism is wrong, racism is very dangerous.

Justin Simien

#2. I love when scenes are intentionally and meticulously planned so we feel like this is a handcrafted scene that only works in this moment and this movie, and that's the way I approach my films.

Justin Simien

#3. It is frustrating having to walk through America having to bob and weave people's impressions of me because they see a tall, black guy walking down the street. That is frustrating.

Justin Simien

#4. Calling out the supposed 'abuse' of welfare by blacks and other people of color is a time-honored tactic for distracting the general public from actual national issue. It also taps into latent, subconscious racism, which is what right-wing politicians would call a 'win-win.

Justin Simien

#5. What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized.

Justin Simien

#6. I love being entertained sure, but the movies that I live for, the movies that I buy and think about and stay in my mind are the movies that entertain me but leave me with something a little uncomfortable to grapple with in the lobby.

Justin Simien

#7. As a person of color, I was just really tired of the fact that I wasn't seeing my story in the culture,

Justin Simien

#8. Sometimes identity can be your salvation. It can be liberating to find your place in the world, but at some point, identity can hold you back.

Justin Simien

#9. I love films from all these different points of views that used the idea of the school as a way to talk about the American experience. It took me a while to figure how to write a movie like that, because that's not something you learn at film school

Justin Simien

#10. I love the art house, and when I say the art house, I don't just mean little, independent movies but movies that really aim to be about something and say something and I love those movies.

Justin Simien

#11. Despite this book, white people will still be able to enjoy Vespa scooters without comment and properly conjugate words without anyone being surprised.

Justin Simien

#12. This film isn't about "white racism", or racism at all. DEAR WHITE PEOPLE is about identity. It's about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who they understand themselves to truly be. And this societal conflict appears to be one that many share.

Justin Simien

#13. Black folks are often individually regarded as the authority on every facet of black culture and the people who create it, but it's exhausting for most black people to constantly be relied upon as the go-to official spokesnegro.

Justin Simien

#14. Unfortunately, 'post racism' is also a myth, like unicorns and black people who survive to the end of a horror movie.

Justin Simien

#15. The idea of "post-racism," just like that of "reverse racism," is really just a coded way of denying the existence of actual racism. And denying the existence of actual racism is really just another form of (you guessed it) racism.

Justin Simien

#16. If the characters [in a movie] aren't real, if their lives aren't realistic, if you call bullshit at any point in their journey, then the rest of it is invalid.

Justin Simien

#17. The pressure to be quintessentially black in every moment, whether it comes from the outside world or is self-imposed, keeps black people from being our authentic selves.

Justin Simien

#18. I have this natural thing in my head that when I sit down to write something serious, I tend to make jokes. I can't help it. I can't help but desire for the narrative to be as complicated and as truthful as possible. That's just the way my head works.

Justin Simien