Sajid Javid Quotes

I would argue that the objective evidence shows that big government is not a friend to African Americans.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.

Government is never so noble as when it is addressing wrongs.

The eight men who are survivors of the syphilis study at Tuskegee are a living link to a time not so very long ago that many Americans would prefer not to remember, but we dare not forget. It was a time when our nation failed to live up to its ideals, when our nation broke the trust with our people that is the very foundation of our democracy. It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future. And without remembering it, we cannot make amends and we cannot go forward…. The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.

Minority ethnic issues need to be mainstream issues.

Being black, I'm involved in the reparations movement. It's focused toward the African-American audience. We could begin to heal.

Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

When people think about reparations, they immediately think about people who've been dead for 100 years.

Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice. Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls for social relief.

We want no black Ireland in America. We want no aggrieved class in America.

I am aware that in presenting myself as an advocate for the Indians and their rights, I shall claim but little sympathy from the community at large, and that I shall stand very much alone....I feel it is my imperative to adhere to ... a principle enduring as life itself. That principle is to protect the Indian against wrong and oppression, and to vindicate him in the enjoyment of rights which have been solemnly guaranteed to him by this Government.

A New Dealer regrets poverty and deplores the fact that it is necessary for society to slough off its misfits as an individual sheds his impurities and his diseases. But New Dealers believe that human want and human distress should be prevented or at least ameliorated.

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.

While it is admitted that each State in which slavery exists has by the Constitution of the United States the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition with in its own boundaries; this Society shall endeavor to convince their fellow citizens that slaveholding is a heinous sin in the sight of God. and that the duty, safety and best interests of all concerned require its immediate abandonment without expatriation.

The South may well wish that there had never been a slave trade, that Yankee skippers had never brought people from Africa to this country. But they did, and the South prospered greatly from the work of these people. The colored,, built the prosperity of the South. And now, when everywhere in the world slavery is acknowledged to be wrong and full citizenship has been granted to all of our people, we should do it not only in words but in actual deeds and with our hearts.

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

It is not just Negroes but all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

We have got to move away from the concept of race and color because that is what apartheid is. We cannot end apartheid if we retain these concepts.

The Great Society wanted to make America look like a country in which Little Rock could never have happened. It failed because it was a venture in denial rather than in realistic social transformation.

That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

The times when black women have been successful in confronting and overcoming the structural and institutional sexism and racism that persists in our society have been when we are thoughtful and strategic about speaking up. It's when we've done what it takes to introduce and implement our ideas and our plans to make things better.

I want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community.

African-Americans have a lot to teach the world.

I came up in a time where the assumption was, in the '60s and '70s, where the federal government was a great agent of progressive social change, it was the intervener in the best sense, and it would come and address injustice forthrightly.

We've come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.