Top 45 Affirmative Action Quotes

To be sure Plato did not favor ‘affirmative action’ to fill political and military offices in his own society; nor did he enroll women in his school.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

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.

A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court.

When population shifts – brought about by fair housing laws, affirmative action and landmark school desegregation rulings – political power is challenged as well.

I don’t want affirmative action – too much affirmative, not enough action.

In talking with affirmative-action administrators and with blacks and whites in general, I found that supporters of affirmative action focus on its good intentions and detractors emphasize its negative effects. It was virtually impossible to find people outside either camp.

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

To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The sprinkling of people of color through elite institutions in the United States, due to affirmative action policies and the limited progress of middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans, creates the illusion of great progress.

In theory, affirmative action certainly has all the moral symmetry that fairness requires. It is reformist and corrective, even repentent and redemptive.

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.

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

To abandon affirmative action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination… Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The sixth man, the position, I don’t have a problem with, but the award – it’s not that it’s not important, but being singled out, it’s like affirmative action or something like that to me. So, it’s like, whatever.

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.

In Obama’s case, we’ve enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation’s highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have ‘the first African-American president.’

The perception of linked fate and that feeling of being always on the spot as a representative of the race, at least in mixed company, are features of African American life that predate affirmative action and arise outside of its presence.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

I am an affirmative action hire.

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

I don’t know what this definition of affirmative action is for some.

Affirmative action is not something that the World Bank believes in or promotes.

Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms – as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.

Let’s be clear about one thing everyone should know: Affirmative action is constitutional.

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.

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.

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.