QUOTES
"The
only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights
of people you don't agree with"
I
have not been animated in my life to fight against race and sex discrimination
simply because of my own identity. That would mean that one must be South African
to fight apartheid, or a poor white in Appalachia to fight poverty, or Jewish
to fight anti-Semitism. And I just reject that conception of how struggles should
be waged."
"There
is no reason to repeat bad history."
With
children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are
going to have to exist on their own merits."
"The
question has been asked, 'What is a woman?' A woman is a person who makes choices.
A woman is a dreamer. A woman is a planner. A woman is a maker, and a molder.
A woman is a person who makes choices. A woman builds bridges. A woman makes children
and makes cars. A woman writes poetry and songs. A woman is a person who makes
choices."
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.
Most
people think civil rights today is about "whether or not I'm turning down somebody
at the door because he is black or female." It doesn't happen that way anymore.
It is more subtle. It happens when women are asked at a job interview, "Do you
intend to get pregnant within the next two years?" And it happens to women much
more than it happens to blacks, because blacks have spent more than 300 years
trying to educate the country about how perverse it all is.
I
don't for a moment believe that women have suffered the same kind of injustices
that blacks have -- women have never been enslaved. But still, many of the psychological
and economic problems are the same. This country would go bankrupt in a day if
the Supreme Court suddenly ordered the powers-that-be to pay back wages to children
of slaves and to the women who've worked all their lives for half wages or no
pay.
