On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to recognize and improve the treatment of women in order to achieve true equality for all, especially for the black community.
Eleanor Holmes Norton points out that the pursuit of racial equality cannot ignore the systemic issues present in the treatment of women and family structures within American society. By highlighting these specific challenges, she suggests that the injustices faced by black individuals are intertwined with gender-related inequalities, indicating that true progress in equality requires addressing both fronts simultaneously.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of social justice, I might say, 'As Eleanor Holmes Norton once said, on the road to equality...' to highlight gender issues.
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.
I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.
Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.
I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.
If a man can coach a female, why can't a female coach a male? When I was looking for a coach, the gender of the coach never occurred to me. It was about who I thought was good and who I could get along with and listen to.
If you believe, as I do, that merit is equally distributed between the sexes, then any result that isn't around half and half should be troubling.
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to woman as freely as to man.
Women want to be free to choose from the same range of options that men take for granted. In our quest for equal pay, equal access to education and opportunities, we have made great strides. But until women can move freely and think freely in their homes, on the streets, in the workplace without the fear of violence, there can be no real freedom.
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