A Quote by J. C. Watts

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

Quote Topics

Action Affirmative Affirmative Action Balanced Balanced Budget Boy Buddy Budget Everything Growing Growing Up Helen Me Poor Proud Taught Up Views Welfare Young

Quote Author

J. C. Watts
American - Politician
Born: November 18, 1957

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

J. C. Watts

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

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

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 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

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

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

Sonia Sotomayor

Growing up poor taught me a lot. It instilled in me the ethics of hard work.

Chieh Huang

As a young boy growing up it was my dream to play for Australia and to pull on the famous green and gold shirt to represent my country. To have been given the opportunity to not only fulfil that dream, but to have done it 79 times, and many of which as captain, makes me incredibly proud and thankful.

Mile Jedinak

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

Paul Mooney

Coming from a filmy background, I have seen everything growing up, but even at that point of time, it never really fascinated me. I did not like going to my dad's shoots. We were taught not to get carried away with it from a very young age.

Sonakshi Sinha

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

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

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.

Shelby Steele

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.