Affirmative Action quotes:

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Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap. -- Joe Klein
If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity? -- Maynard Jackson
Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach. -- Susan Estrich
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 has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles. -- John Kasich
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
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
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
I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions. -- Sonia Sotomayor
Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team. -- J. C. Watts
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
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
I am an affirmative action hire. -- Anna Quindlen
The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work. -- Harold Washington
If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it. -- George W. Bush
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
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
There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects. -- Sonia Sotomayor
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
And, even if Affirmative Action survives, it is also clear that these policies are not themselves sufficient to close the educational and employment gaps that plague U.S. minorities. -- Harry J. Holzer
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
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
Those in blue suits who use thinly veiled race symbols -- when they say welfare and crime and three strikes and anti- affirmative action -- they are sending messages more profound their language. -- Jesse 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
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 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
Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making. -- Andrew Young
You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action. -- Sonia Sotomayor
A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass. -- Richard Lamm
When I call myself an affirmative action baby, I'm talking about the essence of what affirmative action was when it started. -- Sonia Sotomayor
Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty. -- Jack Kemp
If we are prepared to invest the necessary time and effort, affirmative action can contribute to Harvard's quality and not detract from it. -- Derek Bok
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 was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong. -- Alan Dershowitz
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
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
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
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
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
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
So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest -- Clarence Thomas
Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary. -- Cornel West
I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action. -- Paul Mooney
I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it. -- Quentin Bryce
Canada's official languages program is arguably the most successful affirmative action program in history -- Bruce Hicks
I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action. -- Joe Lieberman
Didn't we settle contraception & affirmative action? If the GOP keep going backwards they'll soon be debating slavery. -- Andy Borowitz
If they're all so brilliant and I'm such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn't catch me? -- Jayson Blair
Diversity for diversity's sake is nothing more than affirmative action and can make no claim to being part of America's greatness. -- Rush Limbaugh
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
There's been the same kind of demonizing of the word 'feminism' as words like 'liberal,' 'affirmative action,' and so on. -- Gloria Steinem
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
Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms. -- Garry Kasparov
I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there. -- Sonia Sotomayor
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
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
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
You have countries like India that have tried to help untouchables, with essentially affirmative-action programs, but it hasn't fundamentally changed the structure of their societies. -- Barack Obama
Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets. -- Tracy Morgan
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
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
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.
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
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
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
When I ran I was a first candidate to talk about how immigration was going be so damaging to the American people. When I first ran I talked about affirmative-action. -- David Duke
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
There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach. -- Ruth J. Simmons
There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach. -- Ruth J. Simmons
The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them. -- Cornel West
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
And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know. -- James Earl Jones
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
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
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 champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good. -- Randall Kennedy
[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
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
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
If you represent all the people you should be able listen to someone who's pro-abortion are anti-abortion. Even though you might have a different view you should hear somebody who's pro-affirmative-action anti-affirmative action. -- David Duke
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
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

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