A Quote by 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

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Action Administrators Affirmative Affirmative Action Blacks Camp Effects Either Emphasize Find Focus Found General Good Good Intentions Impossible Intentions Negative Outside People Supporters Talking Virtually Whites

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Shelby Steele
American - Author
Born: January 1, 1946

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 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

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality...Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another...Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements.

Shelby Steele

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 was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace.

Florence King

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

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

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

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

Paul Mooney

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

[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

I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action.

Joe Lieberman

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.

Eleanor Holmes Norton

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

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

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

A Quote by Shelby Steele

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