Affirmative Action Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Football, Strong, Team

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• I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.

  Quentin Bryce

  Support, Special, Needs

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• 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

  Culture, Action, Victim

  Tammy Bruce (2003). “The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values”, Prima Lifestyles

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

  Jack Kemp

  Ideas, Liberty, Quota

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• 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

  Marijuana, Needs, Quota

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• 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

  Motivation, Balance, Trying

  "Videotaped remarks shed light on Sotomayor" by Charlie Savage, www.sfgate.com. June 11, 2009.

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• 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

  Opposites, Way, Action

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• The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

  Harold Washington

  Action, Affirmative, Fallacy

  Harold Washington, Alton Miller (1988). “Climbing a Great Mountain: Selected Speeches of Mayor Harold Washington”

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• 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

  Congratulations, Government, Justice

  Harold Washington, Alton Miller (1988). “Climbing a Great Mountain: Selected Speeches of Mayor Harold Washington”

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• Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

  Andrew Young

  Effort, Decision, Action

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• 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

  Class, Community, Black

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• 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

  Race, Blue, Profound

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

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Baby, Talking, Essence

  "NBC's Guthrie Frets Over Supreme Court Split: 'So-Called Liberals' vs 'Conservative Bloc'". "Today" with Savannah Guthrie, www.newsbusters.org. January 14, 2013.

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• All rights are individual. We do not get our rights because we belong to a group. Whether it's homosexuals, women, minorities, it leads us astray. You don't get your rights belonging to your group. A group can't force themselves on anybody else. So there should be no affirmative action for any group.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Groups, Minorities

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• Due to affirmative action, about half of the black law students fall to the bottom 10% percent of the class and they are 2.5 times more likely than whites not to graduate college. Blacks are four times less likely to pass the bar exam on the first attempt.

  Peter Kirsanow

  Fall, College, Law

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• Affirmative action is not going to be the long-term solution to the problems of race in America, because, frankly, if you've got 50 percent of African-American or Latino kids dropping out of high school, it doesn't really matter what you do in terms of affirmative action. Those kids aren't going to college.

  Barack Obama

  School, Kids, College

  "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer, edition.cnn.com. July 27, 2008.

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• 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

  Country, India, Action

  Source: www.theatlantic.com

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• You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Believe, Opportunity, Men

  Commencement Address at Howard University, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. June 04, 1965.

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• 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

  Believe, Feelings, Belief

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• We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Years, Today, Use

  Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)

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• The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Persistence, Reality, Government

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• Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

  Cornel West

  Thinking, Action, Affirmative

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.

  Andrew Young

  Military, Army, Important

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• 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

  Rocks, White, Competition

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• And when you tell me that somebody's skin color or gender is going to determine their prospects in this world, that is turning the clock back hundreds of years. Back to a time before this nation declared that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator; not by their ancestry, not by their skin color, not by their gender, not by Congress, not by the Constitution, and not by the laws

  Alan Keyes

  Men, Skin Color, Years

  "Preparing Our Country for the 21st Century: The Official Transcript of the United We Stand America Conference". Book by United We Stand America Inc., November, 1995.

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