28 Quotes by Richard Benjamin

I always say that you should remake flops, not hits.

It’s the texture of New York that people miss by filming elsewhere. There are layers and layers of character – even in the pavement – that you can’t get anywhere else. And the speed that the people move. It’s so different from other places.

People would say, “You know, Rich, it’s nature. Birds of a feather flock together.” I have to point out to them that, no, that’s not the case.

Louisville, Colorado, which was just voted by CNN and Money magazine as the best place to live, is a veritable Whitopia that is unaffected by the housing crisis and even the severe recession. You look at the best places to live, according to Money’s 2009 list, and 9 of the 10 are Whitopias.

Of course, there isn’t really a black population in Idaho or Utah.

The interesting thing about Georgia is, Atlanta is teeming with middle-class black people and black people with money – and yet there is still segregation.

Problem with segregation isn’t that people can’t live in peaceful harmony singing “Kumbaya” – although that wouldn’t be bad. The problem is that many of these Whitopian communities are taking state, local, and federal resources with them.

When well-qualified, upper middle-class blacks or Latinos or Asians move to predominantly white neighborhoods, there’s what’s called the tipping point. That tipping point is generally 15 percent; at 15 percent you begin to see white flight.

I don’t want to live in a monoculture of any kind. I don’t want to live in a wealthy monoculture, a black monoculture. I don’t want to live in an elitist, progressive monoculture.