Political Quotes

“affirmative action is not a perfect policy. In an ideal world, we would not need affirmative action; we would not even want it. We would admit everyone, regardless of past practices of discrimination, regardless of the need to promote diversity in higher education, regardless of anything but merit. We do not live in a perfect world. We live in a society and in an economy that has been shaped by our history. That history includes an economy that was based upon slavery. It includes, at one time, a definition of African Americans as being worth only a fraction of the value of white Americans. It is a history that includes an official policy of school segregation. It includes a denial of voting rights, of Jim Crow laws. In my own State of Virginia, it is a history that includes, in our own time, in our lifetimes, an official policy of massive resistance to integrated classrooms. The closest correlation with academic success of any student is the educational experience of their parents. But what if parents and grandparents and great grandparents were denied access to a decent education as the official policy of the government? Our government denied African American children access to a decent education. We cannot pretend that did not happen. While it may not be the fairest way, affirmative action is still probably the most effective way to overcome these official policies of denial of access.”