when some including John Kerry called for an adjustment to Affirmative Action that would recognize and hopefully address the contradictions that led to the disenfranchisment of some non-minorities. The remedies were sometimes applied with a broad brush and the entire system of affirmative action was threatened by a wary conservative Supreme Court. The effort was to explore ways to fix the percieved problems to avoid losing it altogether.
You can hear Ms. Berry's sense of betrayal, but John Kerry was, and is more than sympathetic to those who would seek to preserve the program.
Here are some of the Senator's thoughts and actions on this issue:
Title: National Public Radio Tavis Smiley Show Transcript
Location: Unknown
Date: 01/30/2003
Copyright 2003 National Public Radio (R). All rights reserved.
SHOW: Tavis Smiley (9:00 AM ET) - NPR
January 30, 2003 Thursday
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000003106&keyword=&phrase=affirmative+action&contain=SMILEY: You have come out very strongly, as you just articulated, in opposition to the president's position on this affirmative action question vis-a-vis the University of Michigan. Back in 1992, though, you said affirmative action, and I quote, "kept America thinking in racial terms."
Sen. KERRY: What I said was, I was describing what a lot of people in white America were feeling at that point of time and the way in which it was divided. But if you look at the very paragraph you read from, at the top of the paragraph, it says, 'I support affirmative action,' and at the bottom of the paragraph, it says, 'I support affirmative action.' So I bracketed what I was trying to make was an observation in the country about how what we really needed to do was create an urban policy in America, a policy that addresses the inequities of our school system. The fact is that today in America, we have institutionalized separate and unequal school systems, and I underscore unequal. We've got school districts in the inner cities and in rural areas that have no tax base, and I don't think you can fulfill the promise of America and the full measure of our constitutional rights unless you provide a real opportunity to all of the students of our country, and that's one of the things I wish the president would address, is that inequality.
Title: ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos Transcript
Location: Unknown
Date: 01/25/2004
ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos Transcript
January 25, 2004 Sunday
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000027581&keyword=&phrase=affirmative+action&contain=I did exactly what Bill Clinton did. I said affirmative action needed to be mended, not ended. We fixed it. We actually took the quota problem out and we fixed it but I believe in affirmative action. I still do. I believe in education reform. I don't believe in disrespecting teachers. See, some people see these things as just black and white. They're not. The problem is that, yes, we need increased accountability in schools. We need to raise the standards. But you don't have to do it in a way that disrespects teachers and literally throws the baby out with the bathwater which is what they're doing.
Speaker: Senator John Forbes Kerry (MA)
Title: NBC Meet the Press Transcript
Location: Unknown
Date: 08/31/2003
NBC Meet the Press Transcript
August 31, 2003 Sunday
http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=M000018741&keyword=&phrase=affirmative+action&contain=MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to affirmative action. In 1992 you went to your alma mater, Yale, and gave a now highly noted speech about the—affirmative action.
SEN. KERRY: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: This is what you said, that “...today the civil rights arena is controlled by lawyers and the winners and losers determined by...rules most Americans neither understand nor are sympathetic with. ...This shift in the civil rights agenda has directed most of out attention and much of our hope into one inherently limited and divisive program: affirmative action...We must be willing to acknowledge publicly what we know to be true: that just as the benefits to America of affirmative action cannot be denied, neither can the costs...The truth is that affirmative action has kept America thinking in racial terms.”
This week in Boston, your hometown, a federal court said that four white firefighters must be given their jobs because they had been passed over by black applicants who had tested lower on the test. Do you agree with the court decision?
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: The court also said the city no longer has to hire one black for every white they hire. Do you agree with that?
SEN. KERRY: Yeah. Tim, let me explain exactly what I said. Affirmative action, if you recall, back in the 1990s—Bill Clinton said this, too—needed to be mended. I was one of the early people saying we have to mend it, don't end it. That's precisely what we did. We tried to end the quota concept and make sure we kept affirmative action. I have always supported affirmative action. I even had that very paragraph bracketed. On the front end of the paragraph and on the back end of the paragraph, I said, “I support affirmative action. We need to mend it, don't end it.” That's what we did, and I'm glad the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed that we need to continue.
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