Quotes & Sayings About Affirmative Action

The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding. — Cornel West

Along with my spiritual practices of meditation, affirmative prayer, and visioning, what catalyzes my sense of aliveness is putting those practices into action by being of service to others. — Michael Beckwith

I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race. — Peggy McIntosh

I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment and pro-labor. I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America or I was going to be a happy Democrat. — Wesley Clark

I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women. — Camille Paglia

Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary. — Cornel West

Here's the point - you're looking at affirmative action, and you're looking at marijuana. You legalize marijuana, no need for quotas, because really, who's gonna wanna work? — Jon Stewart

I think there are some things ... that may even be distorted in the practice, such as some affirmative action programs becoming quota systems. And I'm old enough to remember when quotas existed in the United States for the purpose of discrimination, and I don't want to see that happen again. — Ronald Reagan

What makes the Southern Poverty Law Center particularly odious is its habit of taking legitimate conservatives and jumbling them with genuine hate groups (the Klan, Aryan Nation, skinheads, etc.), to make it appear that there's a logical relationship between say opposing affirmative action and lynching, or demands for an end to government services for illegal aliens and attacks on dark-skinned immigrants. The late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called this 'the broad-brush smear.' — Don Feder

I believe that Harvard can have, and must have, a strong affirmative action program that reflects our commitment to equal opportunity while fully respecting the academic standards of the University. — Derek Bok

However much history may be invoked in support of these policies (affirmative action), no policy can apply to history but can only apply to the present or the future. The past may be many things, but it is clearly irrevocable. Its sins can no more be purged than its achievements can be expunged. Those who suffered in centuries past are as much beyond our help as those who sinned are beyond our retribution. — Thomas Sowell

I want to make one thing clear: I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-affirmative action, I'm pro- environment, pro-health care, and pro-labor. And if that ain't a Democrat, then I must be at the wrong meeting. — Wesley Clark

I think Bush has capitulated on affirmative action and government spending. Apart from that, he's OK, I guess. About the same as Howard Dean. — Peter Brimelow

Some would argue that the president himself benefited from a form of affirmative action because as a C student, he only got into Yale because his father was a wealthy alumnus. But the White House counters that Saddam is a menace and must be stopped. — Jon Stewart

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run. — Sonia Sotomayor

Does affirmative action place minority students in colleges where they're likely to fail while depriving other applicants of the chance to attend the most challenging schools where they are capable of succeeding? Does rent control drive up the cost of housing, depriving property owners of the same opportunity to profit as any other investor while driving down the quality and quantity of the housing stock? Do minimum wage laws reduce the number of entry-level jobs, making it harder to escape from poverty? Because compassion, by its nature, subordinates doing good to feeling good, these are questions the warm-hearted rarely pursue. — William Voegeli

You take a poor black child. Give him a good education, tell him he's somebody, that God didn't create junk when he created him, and that black child will create his own affirmative action. — J. C. Watts

White men in North America are the beneficiaries of the single biggest affirmative action program in world history. It's called world history. — Michael Kimmel

Be assertive, in speech and in conduct. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Workers, black and white, need some kind of international affirmative action to protect them from unfair competition with unorganized or slave labor abroad and unfair competition with robots at home. — Jesse Jackson

My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me - when my family was working-class, and we were struggling. — Richard Rodriguez

Republicans can be a funny bunch. They're against affirmative action, but they always seem to be able to find people of color to fill a slot just when they're most needed. — John Ridley

Embrace the possibility of a fulfilled dream. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You can't talk about the environment, you can't talk about political correctness, affirmative action and all the other innumerable things that freedom is about, unless you have a free society based upon the integrity of the individual. If you have a responsible society, these other issues will not come up in a responsible society, and that is what freedom is all about. — Russell Means

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis. — Cornel West

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult to join? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as different from the majority of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think that you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race? — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When I was a young filmmaker starting out, I was really snobby about all the affirmative action for women filmmakers because I felt it should be about your talent, and I made a film that won awards, and people wanted me. — Gillian Armstrong

Your actions are living affirmations of what you say you believe and feel. 'Affirmative action' is when your actions are in congruence with your beliefs & feelings. You're doing it to make YOU welcome. — Derek Rydall

The feminism of equality, of toughness, of anti-discrimination, has been overwhelmed by one of victimhood and demands for special treatment....At a certain point, when we demand an equal ratio of men to women in certain fields, what we're criticizing is not "the system," but the choices that women themselves are making.....let's keep our eye on the question of equal opportunity and stop obsessing about equal outcomes, lest we find ourselves trying to cure society, not of sexism, but of free choice. — Elizabeth Wasserman

[A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks ... who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs. — Thomas Sowell

I was used to the buttoned up, wealthy, Casper-skinned whites that always spoke in their library voices and used words like sassy and spicy to describe me. I was used to white people that embodied the suburban American dream. White people like Lainie's parents, who wished their daughters weren't dating me, but tolerated it and engaged me in discussions about affirmative action and how I benefited from it. — Gabby Rivera

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula. — J. C. Watts

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality ... Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another ... Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements. — Shelby Steele

It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills. — Douglas Brinkley

When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started. — Sonia Sotomayor

Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status. — Ron Suskind

Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach. — Susan Estrich

If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity? — Maynard Jackson

Indicate which principles you support regarding affirmative action and discrimination. 1. The federal government should discontinue affirmative action programs. 2. The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the public sector. 3. The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the private sector. — Newt Gingrich

I am confident of God's faithfulness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty. — Jack Kemp

Started by missionaries in 1841, Punahou Academy had grown into a prestigious prep school, an incubator for island elites ... It hadn't been easy to get me in, my grandparents told her (my mother); there was a long waiting list, and I was considered only because of the intervention of Gramps' boss, who was an alumnus (my first experience with affirmative action, it seems, had little to do with race). — Barack Obama

Many people in Nixon's camp had genuine faith in affirmative action. It wasn't designed to fail, but it wasn't designed to succeed, either; the intent behind it was not rooted in a desire to help black people attain equal standing in society. It was riot insurance. It was a financial incentive for blacks to stay in their own communities and out of the suburbs. (183) — Tanner Colby

What is Kanye West's message? Like most rap, "I am the greatest person ever and you're not." I used to call it affirmative action for the ego. — Bill Maher

I don't know how one would define an affirmative-action hire. I ultimately do not know what role race played in my hiring. — Jayson Blair

Affirmative action benefits NO ONE. It discriminates against Asian American and White students, while promoting negative stereotypes about the competency of African American students -- that they only got in because of their race, not merit. — Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing. — Jonathan Coleman

Trying to get stuff straight right at the end when you never cared all through your life. Trying to get into heaven on the affirmative action plan. — Leonard Pitts Jr.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large. — Henry Louis Gates

Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities - members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. We have this ludicrous bureaucratic sense that certain racial groups, regardless of class, are minorities. So what happens is those "minorities" at the very top of the ladder get chosen for everything. — Richard Rodriguez

The fact is that in too many parts of our country, we still have discrimination. And affirmative action is not just something that applies to people of color. Some people have a mistaken view of it in America. It also is with respect to women, it's with respect to other efforts to try to reach out and be inclusive in our country. — John F. Kerry

Who knows what Yale thought it was getting when it hired Richard Rodriguez? The people who offered me the job thought there was nothing wrong with that. I thought there was something very wrong. I still do. I think race-based affirmative action is crude and absolutely mistaken. — Richard Rodriguez

Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race. — Clarence Thomas

Affirmative action makes employers think, 'Black woman nuclear physicist? Hah! Probably let her into Harvard 'cause they were looking for a twofer. Bet she got C's in high school practical math. Give her a job in personnel.' — P. J. O'Rourke

We must neither behave as children by resisting honesty, nor allow ourselves to be treated as children by having honesty withheld. — John McWhorter

What is so remarkable about the success of affirmative action is that it has been accomplished despite the Justice Department and the policies of the federal government. — Harold Washington

In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite. — Eric Liu

The system knows how to cherry pick black people. It's like affirmative action - once a year, one is recognized. But what has to occur is self-emergence so if they ignore you, you don't have to disappear. — Haile Gerima

I looked up affirmative action once in Wikipedia, and it said, 'A measure by which white men are discriminated against,' and I got so mad. — Gloria Steinem

Affirmative action is the most important modern anti-discrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something, or else it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition. — Eleanor Holmes Norton

Any policy that gives people things they haven't earned is seen as immoral, because it lessens the incentive to be self-disciplined. From this perspective, affirmative action looks immoral to conservatives, on the grounds that it gives preferential treatment to women and minorities. It is a relatively direct consequence of the Strict Father model. The — George Lakoff

Blacks who have not succumbed to the victim culture have been, are, and will be doing quite well - all on their own, without handouts, affirmative action, and other patronizing measures. — Tammy Bruce

The Australian way of affirmative action is setting goals and recognising discrimination and lack of opportunity and deciding to take action and setting some goals and targets. I guess I prefer that language to talking about quotas. — Quentin Bryce

There is another, more sinister consequence of affirmative action: the carefully engineered appearance of great racial progress strengthens the "colorblind" public consensus that personal and cultural traits, not structural arrangements, are largely responsible for the fact that the majority of young black men in urban areas across the United States are currently under the control of the criminal justice system or branded as felons for life. In — Michelle Alexander

Affirmative action has been generally cast in terms of race. I think women themselves are not as cognizant of the role affirmative action has played in opening the doors for women. — Faye Wattleton

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action. — Sonia Sotomayor

Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action. — Ron Paul

Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath. — Jim Webb

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly. — Dick Gephardt

If we conservatives "of color" refuse to promote the welfare state, unfettered abortion, affirmative action, and massive immigration, we are guilty of "selling out. — Michelle Malkin

The ugliest thing in America is greed, the lust for power and domination, the lunatic ideology of perpetual Growth - with a capital G. 'Progress' in our nation has for too long been confused with 'Growth'; I see the two as different, almost incompatible, since progress means, or should mean, change for the better - toward social justice, a livable and open world, equal opportunity and affirmative action for all forms of life. And I mean all forms, not merely the human. The grizzly, the wolf, the rattlesnake, the condor, the coyote, the crocodile, whatever, each and every species has as much right to be here as we do. — Edward Abbey

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap. — Joe Klein

[I] can't actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease. Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices. The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin [..] When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled? — Eric Holder

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. — Gloria Steinem

Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country. — Alan Keyes

Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace. — Florence King

During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women [chapter] in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives they were the wives of male executives. As long as her income came from her husband, she was not feeling generous when affirmative action let another woman have a head start vying for her husband's (her) income. — Warren Farrell

W. Bush's life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. — Chris Hedges

The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action. — Charles A. Murray

I ended Affirmative Action by executive order and replaced it with a leadership model that created more opportunities for African-American and Hispanic students. — Jeb Bush

And affirmative action is a very nice term for racial discrimination against better-qualified white people in jobs, employment, promotions and scholarships, and college admittance. — David Duke

I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it. — Quentin Bryce

A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass. — Richard Lamm

The worst thing about affirmative action is that it encourages reverse discrimination, so-called because it goes in the opposite way of how we naturally discriminate. — Stephen Colbert

Old white guys can be a funny bunch, can't they? The same anti-same-sex marriage, anti-affirmative action cadre can flower into the biggest supporters of 'equality' the minute they get a whiff of minority empowerment. — John Ridley

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world. — Russell Simmons

Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy. — Isabel Molina-Guzman

This is what it is for Asians to be part of - support affirmative action, even though it may be against their interest, but they feel it's a matter of justice. — Cornel West

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action. — Paul Mooney

Most important, [research on affirmative action] has completely failed to show that affirmative action ever closes the academic gap between minorities and whites. And failing in this, affirmative action also fails to help blacks achieve true equality with whites - the ultimate measure of which is parity in skills and individual competence. Without this underlying parity there can never be true equality in employment, income levels, rates of home ownership, educational achievement and the rest. — Shelby Steele

That is one of the reasons I oppose this whole Affirmative Action business. We are not supposed to be judged based on what our ancestors did or suffered. We are supposed to be judged as individuals, based on what we are able to achieve. — Alan Keyes

I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday. — Dick Gephardt

Mass incarceration - not attacks on affirmative action or lax civil rights enforcement - is the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement — Michelle Alexander

I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid. — J. C. Watts

We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more. — Barack Obama

Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles. — John Kasich

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled. — Spike Lee

White men in Europe and the US are the beneficiaries of the single greatest affirmative action program in the history of the world; it is called the history of the world. — Michael Kimmel

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place. — Harold Washington

Affirmative action and equal opportunity was never and is not intended to let people with fewer skills and less experience triumph over those with more. It was intended to aid a decision between two people who have the same set of skills. — Tarah Wheeler