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I was asked by an NPR reporter once why don't I talk about race that often. I said, 'It's because I'm a neurosurgeon.' And she thought that was a strange response... I said, 'You see, when I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are.'

I never had plastic surgery. I had a nose procedure done because I had to. I had no cartilage in my nose; I have a piece of cartilage from my ear put into my nose. I had a medical procedure done. I have no plastic in my nose.

I personally would not have plastic surgery. What the hell for? It looks ridiculous.

My greatest fear about a world in which racial reassignment surgery becomes common is that it then becomes an expression of all kinds of class privilege. You have a truly dystopian society divided between the people who can afford to be racially altered and perfected and the ones who can't.

I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different.

I don't happen to approve of plastic surgery. I think God put plastic surgeons on this earth for good reasons - people get burned or people might have a nose like Pinocchio and that has to be fixed. But to just chop yourself up to look a few years younger? You could come out looking like a Picasso picture.

Everyone has that friend who's every day, like, 'I hate my nose, I hate my nose, I hate my nose.' You either need to come to peace with it and be like, alright, I hate it, but it's part of me - or change it. So I'm not against plastic surgery, I'm against plastic surgery when it doesn't really need to be done.

The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard.

The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.