Affirmative action has been generally cast in terms of race. I think women themselves are not as cognizant of the role affirmative action has played in opening the doors for women.

Faye Wattleton

Categorized in : Thinking Doors Race

The recognition of rights for women and minorities became a large part of my understanding of what this country is all about.

women understanding rights country

I was raised in a very sheltered, narrow environment. by Faye Wattleton

I was raised in a very sheltered, narrow environment.

i-was-raised very raised environment

'What can your kids teach you?' Well, I believe something different about kids. We don't own them, they have their own knowledge. From the start you have to make the choice to listen.

start you believe knowledge

In 1985, I saw a tape of myself where my eyes were puffy. I looked very tired and bedraggled and not as youthful as I would like to have been.

eyes myself like tired

Being a person who has had plastic surgery and goes to the gym five days a week to work my muscles up so they don't look atrophied as a 60-year-old, I don't disparage people who want to maintain their appearance. But what I don't want is a society that tells me I have to.

me society work people

Many African-American men are incarcerated. And so African-American women do carry an enormous burden. And traditionally have carried a greater burden than perhaps their white counterparts.

burden women white men

We have a very long way to go to really penetrate the power structure. Until that happens, you will not see stability among the workforce, among women - in the workforce among women.

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This is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people, so I think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don't matter is not quite the way our history would define it.

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My mother was from Mississippi, or is from 'Mississippi;' my father was from Alabama. He speaks about conditions in Mississippi and Alabama. They were really the poster children for the bad public laws that segregated, according to race, in our country.

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