QuoteProject
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
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Affirmative action is a crucial method for combating discrimination and has significantly contributed to the economic advancement of marginalized communities.

Eleanor Holmes Norton highlights the importance of affirmative action as a vital strategy for reducing discrimination, particularly in the context of the United States. By asserting that it is the most effective tool in promoting equality, she emphasizes its role in establishing the black middle class through measurable statistical evidence. This quote underlines the necessity of such policies to create significant socio-economic change and to address historical injustices faced by marginalized groups.

Themes

Affirmative ActionDiscriminationEqualitySocial JusticeBlack Middle Class

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a speech addressing the importance of social justice policies.

More from Eleanor Holmes Norton

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.
Eleanor Holmes NortonRead
Affirmative action is the most important modern anti-discrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something, or else it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition.
Eleanor Holmes NortonRead
I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.
Eleanor Holmes NortonRead

Similar quotes

Being a young black man, observing and sensing the need for race equality and women's rights, I wrote about what was important to me.
Curtis MayfieldRead
The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism - the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success - actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.
Michelle AlexanderRead
There are many, many different kinds of intersectional exclusions - not just black women but other women of color. Not just people of color, but people with disabilities. Immigrants. LGBTQ people. Indigenous people.
Kimberle Williams CrenshawRead
After spending time with police officers on ride-alongs, meeting with politicians on the state and federal level and grass roots organizations fighting for human rights, it's clear that our criminal justice system is still crippling communities of color through mass incarceration.
Malcolm JenkinsRead
Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?
Michel'LeRead
If we continue to tolerate this level of poverty in our cities, and go along with eviction as commonplace in poor neighborhoods, it's not for a lack of resources. It will be a lack of something else.
Matthew DesmondRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.