A Quote by Henry Louis Gates

I think that we need more economic-based solutions to the problems afflicting the Black community, and I think that that's a way to redefine affirmative action. I grew up with poor white people in West Virginia, and I know there's a culture of poverty. I know that I've seen white people perform exactly the same pathological forms of behavior as Black people do when they're systematically deprived, whether it's getting pregnant, doing drugs, dropping out of school, whatever we're talking about. I think that we should have affirmative action for poor white people too.

Henry Louis Gates

Quote Topics

About Action Affirmative Affirmative Action Based Behavior Black Black Community Black People Community Culture Deprived Doing Dropping Dropping Out Dropping Out Of School Economic Exactly Exactly The Same Forms Getting Grew Grew Up Know More Need Out Pathological People Perform Poor Poverty Pregnant Problems Redefine Same School Seen Should Should Have Solutions Talking Think Too Up Virginia Way West West Virginia Whatever Whether White

Quote Author

Henry Louis Gates
American - Critic
Born: September 16, 1950

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 struggled more.

Barack Obama

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

A lot of racism going on in the world right now. Who's more racist? Black people or white people? Black people. You know why? 'Cuz we hate black people too! Everything white people don't like about black people, black people really don't like about black people.

Chris Rock

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

I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit.

Malcolm X

Everybody has culture, even white people have culture, but its different with me. So in high school, I was hanging out with the black and Hispanic kids. I'm not hating on white people. I hang with white people, too, but that's where I felt most accepted because I could relate to them more.

Logic

We have to concentrate back on: Where is the money going? Where's it been going for the last thirty years? How do we start to redistribute the cake more evenly, and give people opportunities? That's as much about poor white people in West Virginia as it is about poor black people on the Southside of Chicago.

Irvine Welsh

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

In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys.

Bill Moyers

I think that many black people thought this would be a wonderful and extraordinary thing, for a black family to occupy the White House. Not only black people; a lot of white people thought that, too, but particularly black people.

Randall Kennedy

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

All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they're in the same boat. They've got no economic opportunities.

Charles Barkley

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 communities - and I exempt poor white communities from this - have power over their representation. White people have the ability to define themselves, to exert their agency in a way that they get to be believed. No one believes black people. No one. Until a white person vouches for them.