Disintegration Quotes

“A black senior vice president at a Fortune 500 firm might be able to significantly increase diversity by hiring and promoting qualified African Americans. But those qualified job applicants are going to come from the ranks of the Mainstream, not the Abandoned.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“Since Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty was allowed to peter out in the 1980s, government policies have essentially left the Abandoned to their own devices.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“They don’t enter a country that trains fire hoses on black people, they enter one that practices affirmative action and makes a special effort to enroll their children in the best colleges. They don’t enter a country that is obviously hostile to black entrepreneurs, they enter one with minority set-asides and small-business loans.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“black immigrant children—defined as those who were immigrants themselves, or were the children of immigrants—were stellar academic achievers not only when compared to native-born blacks but when compared to whites as well.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“Obama lays out the essential contradiction that Transcendent black Americans struggle constantly to resolve: not being outside anymore. For the younger Transcendents, this means holding on to experiences they never actually had—not an act of remembering but of imagining.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“the few kids who overcome their surroundings, going on to success in college and beyond, are preternaturally self-motivated and almost always have solid, consistent, competent support from their parents.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“The black Orangeburg we knew was cultured, well-traveled, and urbane, while the white Orangeburg we saw around us—basically a commercial depot and service center for an agricultural belt—seemed unlettered and uncouth”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“encountering a rock-star Harvard professor who happens to be arrogant is like meeting a professional basketball player who happens to be tall.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“in 1968 it would have been noteworthy if a society dinner was racially integrated, even in a token sense. In 2008, it would have been noteworthy if such an affair was not.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“Black Americans at the top of the scale, with incomes of more than $100,000 a year, were most likely to cling to the more traditional view that “blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.” Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America

“Black Americans at the top of the scale, with incomes of more than $100,000 a year, were most likely to cling to the more traditional view that “blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.” Perhaps we should begin to think of racial solidarity as a luxury item. As”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“Half or more of the black students entering elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Duke these days are the sons and daughters of African immigrants.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration

“Forty years ago, if you found yourself among a representative all-black crowd, you could assume that nearly half the people around you were poor, poorly educated, and underemployed. Today, if you found yourself at a representative gathering of black adults, four out of five would be solidly middle class.”
― Eugene Robinson, Disintegration