deep
Blue Crack Addict
This issue is important to me.
If Obama is going to be the President
he will have a lot of influence on this issue.
If Obama is going to be the President
he will have a lot of influence on this issue.
Diemen said:Affirmative action is important to you?
How so?
Diemen said:Affirmative action is important to you? How so?
deep said:Clinton had a policy
Affirmative action: mend it, don’t end it
The Supreme Court rejected the notion that we could ever be separate but equal, and Democrats and Republicans alike passed laws against discrimination and created affirmative action programs to redress centuries of wrongs for minorities and women.
Affirmative action was intended to give everybody a fair chance, but it hasn’t always worked smoothly & fairly. Today there are those who are determined to put an end to affirmative action, as if the purposes for which it was created have been achieved. They have not. Until they are, we need to mend affirmative action, most certainly, but not end it.
That is exactly what we are trying to do: end abuses, prohibit quotas, subject affirmative action to strict review, oppose any benefits to those who aren’t qualified, but make that extra effort to see that everyone has not a guarantee, but a chance.
Source: Between Hope and History, by Bill Clinton, p.132 Jan 1, 1996
deep said:Bush has a policy
Affirmative action: end it.
Q: What are your feelings about affirmative action?
A: Yes, racism exists. I’m not going to be making policy based on guilt. The fundamental question in certain neighborhoods is, how do we break a sense that the system isn’t meant for me? You need mentoring programs. Part of it has to do with there isn’t the entrepreneurial system being passed from one generation to the next.
Source: Interview with Time Magazine, CNN.com/Time.com Aug 1, 2000
deep said:What is the Obama Affirmative Action policy?
Diemen said:In something beyond cryptic 4 word sentences.
watergate said:His grandfather supported planned parenthood so there would be less poor and minorities.
CTU2fan said:Bush sounds like such a bigot in that quote. And he makes no sense.
Obama, Clinton cited by those seeking to extend ‘civil rights initiatives’
The Washington Post
updated 9:10 p.m. PT, Tues., March. 25, 2008
CHICAGO - Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice.
Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar organizations in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.
The initiatives are spearheaded by Ward Connerly, the nation's most prominent opponent of affirmative action, who said he has raised about $1.5 million for the campaigns. He sees the November ballot initiatives as the next step in his drive to end preferences in public education, hiring and contracting.
"Without any doubt, we have to understand that race preferences are on the way out," said Connerly, who heads to Missouri next week to deliver speeches on behalf of that state's constitutional amendment, now tangled in a court battle over the ballot measure's wording.
In the states where Connerly's self-described "civil rights initiative" appears on the ballot, voters are likely to see it alongside the name of the first black or female major-party presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) Connerly contends that the success of Obama and Clinton shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism."
Obama opposes supporter's measure
Connerly, a prosperous and conservative black Republican, said he contributed $500 to Obama's campaign to honor him "for trying to take race out of the body politic." Obama opposes Connerly's approach to affirmative action and lent his voice to a 2006 radio ad opposing the Connerly-sponsored Proposition 2 in Michigan. (The Obama campaign would not comment on whether it is keeping the money.)
Obama is not alone. Opponents of Connerly's effort are using legal challenges and grass-roots organizing techniques to keep the measures off the ballot, or to defeat them.
"As we feared, Connerly's attack on equal opportunity in Michigan has metastasized," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "We know that most Americans support equal opportunity. They know that diversity is good for business, good for the classroom and ultimately good for the country."
Henderson dismissed Connerly's reference to Obama as a willingness to "seize on any factoid to justify his assault on equal opportunity" and added: "I am not surprised he would lift up the performance of Barack to say that race no longer matters in American life. That's a gross overstatement of the lives of most Americans."