Yance Ford

White communities - and I exempt poor white communities from this - have power over their representation. White people have the ability to define themselves, to exert their agency in a way that they get to be believed. No one believes black people. No one. Until a white person vouches for them.

We have to deal with the way that race influences our criminal justice system.

The justice system isn't meant to work for people of color in this country.

Everyone in the street where I grew up was given the same message: You can be anything; you can do anything. That wasn't extraordinary; that was ordinary for us. My folks didn't believe in black exceptionalism. There's nothing exceptional about 'You can have that, too' - except when it comes to justice. You can't have that.

If my making history makes it easier for a trans kid at home somewhere to feel more at home in their skin, then I'm so excited about that.

Our blackness and how to survive being black in America was something that our parents instilled in us extraordinarily well.

People come up and say, 'Thank you' for showing a black family loving their masculine-presenting child and for undoing the myth of black people as being rabidly homophobic.

I have a lot of surrogate parents, but there's no one like your mother.

My impression is that the Academy is really sincere about moving toward a more inclusive and representative Hollywood.

I'm incredibly proud to be the first trans director to be nominated for an Oscar.

The quality of festival Q&As is often a matter of chance. Sometimes the lights come up on movies I loved, and not a single meaningful question is asked. Sometimes it's the opposite.

When I was young, I didn't see anyone who was trans like me anywhere in the movies.