Robert Maynard Quotes

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

But even race-neutral policies and recruitment efforts designed to achieve greater diversity are, in the end, not race neutral.

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. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through the those gates.

I don't believe in college admission or any other venue that we should pick one race or sex over another in college admissions. My philosophy and reaction is that I would not support a program that by race or status alone elevates someone over another in a competition of sorts.

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

Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.

I am criticized for getting jobs because of my name, but I only use it when I have to.

I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.

If giving points to some students to achieve greater diversity is a quota system in violation of the Constitution, how can the awarding of points to the children of a less diverse alumni be upheld?

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

Affirmative action is under attack today, not because it has failed, but because it succeeded.

I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible.

To say that a millionaire son of a Black deserves a preference over a poor White is pure madness.

Affirmative action is the majority’s constitutional prerogative, through the use of the democratic process—and a means of taking responsibility for the community’s past wrongdoing.

We suspect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.

You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval of affirmative action.… We have to prove ourselves and we have to work hard doing it.

I am the perfect affirmative action baby.

I didn't want to land an audition because I was 'The daughter of...' I never wanted to give anyone the opportunity to say, 'You only got the role because of who you are.'

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.

In America, many marginally competent or flatly incompetent whites are hired every day -some because their white skin suits the conscious or unconscious racial preference of their employers. The white children of alumni are often grandfathered into elite universities in what can only be seen as a residual benefit of historic white privilege.

I'm guilty of reverse discrimination. I'm white, and people don't think that white fighters are any good.

A lot of my friends who are white are like, 'Dude, I can't get an audition; it's all Hispanic and black.' It's about time.

Why is it when we see a white guy, we automatically think, 'Let's turn this dude into a star?'

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

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.