"I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person"
About this Quote
The subtext, though, is trickier. “I find it really hard to identify someone by saying…” frames identity as an imposition from the outside, something you do to a person rather than something many people claim for themselves. In practice, that “I don’t see X” posture can blur into colorblindness: a personal ethic that feels fair in private interactions but can flatten the public realities of discrimination. It quietly shifts attention from systems to manners. If the problem is “judging,” then the solution becomes individual goodwill, not structural change.
Context matters: Ross is a Black superstar whose career rose in an industry that marketed her image carefully across racial lines, often punishing overt political specificity while rewarding broad, unthreatening unity. In that light, her resistance to categories reads as both aspiration and self-protection: a way to insist on shared humanity while avoiding the career risks of sounding divisive. The quote works because it taps a powerful fantasy - that if we simply refuse the labels, we can outrun the history attached to them - even as that refusal can make it harder to name, and therefore challenge, inequality when it shows up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ross, Diana. (2026, January 17). I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-judge-people-by-their-sexual-orientation-52738/
Chicago Style
Ross, Diana. "I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-judge-people-by-their-sexual-orientation-52738/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I don't judge people by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin, so I find it really hard to identify someone by saying that they're a gay person or a black person or a Jewish person." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-dont-judge-people-by-their-sexual-orientation-52738/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.



