Quotes of the day

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America suffers as much today from a well-intentioned identification of its citizens by race as it does from old-fashioned racism.

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[R]ace, though a biological fact, is a dangerously empty distinction because it can carry whatever meaning we give it without the support of reason and evidence.

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Shelby Steele, 1996

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This is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed. A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world as with an earthquake. And is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

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In today's conception of fairness, only when all have the same prospects of winning is the fight fair. It was not in The Nation or some other left-wing magazine, but in the neoconservative quarterly The Public Interest that we find opportunity equated with "the same chance to succeed" or "an equal shot at a good outcome"-- regardless of the influence of social, cultural, or family background.

This confusion between the fairness of rules and the equality of prospects is spreading across the political spectrum. Regardless of which of these two things might be considered preferable, we must first be very clear in our own minds that they are completely different, and often mutually incompatible, if we are to have any hope of a rational discussion of policy issues ranging from anti-trust to affirmative action.

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Thomas Sowell, from a speech on Race, Culture, and Equality

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