Affirmative action has to be combined with a broader program of social reform that would emphasize social rights: the right to employment, the right to education, the right to good health. Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.
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Interview with Mother JonesWilliam Julius Wilson
» William Julius Wilson - all quotes »
In those days, 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
If one accepts that in general social services should be made available to all on the basis of ability to pay, one has the choice of two opposite principles of action, although they need not be mutually exclusive—either progressive taxation and free services or fees covering costs with remission for those who cannot afford them. The former method is appropriate, in my view, in rich developed countries where the principle of progressive taxation can be applied without unduly adverse economic or social results, and the wastes inherent in full and free services can be afforded. In less advanced or poorer countries, where neither economy nor society is geared to progressive taxation and waste cannot be tolerated, fees remittable in case of need seem to me clearly more appropriate.
John James Cowperthwaite
(If America abandons affirmative action, the country will take a giant step towards race war because there are) armies of raging blacks and furious Hispanics who would go ballistic over effectuation of the proposed campaigns to roll back the meager gains that nonwhites have made in America during a cruel century.
Carl Rowan
Racism should be viewed as an intervening variable. You give me a set of conditions and I can produce racism in any society. You give me a different set of conditions and I can reduce racism. You give me a situation where there are a sufficient number of social resources so people don't have to compete for those resources, and I will show you a society where racism is held in check. If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.
William Julius Wilson
Leaders must fulfill three functions — provide for the well-being of the led, provide a social organization in which people feel relatively secure, and provide them with one set of beliefs. People like Pasteur and Salk are leaders in the first sense. People like Gandhi and Confucius, on one hand, and Alexander, Caesar and Hitler on the other, are leaders in the second and perhaps the third sense. Jesus and Buddha belong in the third category alone. Perhaps the greatest leader of all times was Mohammed, who combined all three functions. To a lesser degree, Moses did the same.
Holy Prophet Muhammad
Wilson, William Julius
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