Heroes for a Better World

Eleanor Holmes Norton
(1937-)

African-American Politician & Human Rights Activist

birthdate: June 13
birthplace:
Washington, DC

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.

 


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