Paul Mooney Quotes

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 think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

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

Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty.

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

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?

Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

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.

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.

Racial preferences are dead. All that is required now is to give them a decent and honorable burial.

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

If affirmative action is quotas, then I am not for it. If it means equal opportunity, then I say support that. But to ask for special treatment because of race, that bothers me...

I am the perfect affirmative action baby.

I don't think quotas are necessarily an evil. I think when we look at industry in general back to the '60s and the '50s, the way more diverse people like my dad and mom's generation were able to break into industry was because of affirmation action, because of quotas.

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.

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.

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.

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.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

We cannot reform institutional racism or systemic policies if we are not actively engaged. It's not enough to simply complain about injustice; the only way to prevent future injustice is to create the society we would like to see, one where we are all equal under the law.

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.

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.

I still favor alternatives to governmental race-based preferences.