Q: What more could it do?
A: Case by case as it comes up - to look at it and give it a fair shake. And not find reasons not to look at it.
For example, you didn't file your paper, or it had been filed and denied. That doesn't destroy a man's right. But they're hanging people, I mean electrocuting people because they didn't follow the rules.
Q: In terms of making sure you don't exclude African Americans. Would you say it's on a historical basis that they must be included now because they had been excluded previously?
A: I guess that's one of the arguments. But the other one is that the whole comparison is faulted because there's been this discrimination for all of these years and therefore people are in a position that they wouldn't have been in if it were not for that way that passed. So the only way to get rid of the weighted past is to weigh the future. Not as much, but considerably.
Q: But what about colleagues who say that violates the whites' rights?
A: I guess it does, but I don't think the Constitution was meant to use anything that was unlawfully gained and their right is unlawfully gained. For example, your grandfather had a job that a Negro couldn't get. Your father got a job that a Negro couldn't get, therefore you have a better education than the children of those people. So somebody's got to pay for that.
Q: If I say that to a white man he says I didn't own any slaves. I didn't discriminate against anybody.
A: Did he go apply for a job and say he wasn't white? Did he accept the job knowing that Negroes had been excluded? But his father did. That's how he got the money. He got the money from his father to get educated.
Q: But he says let's call it all equal now and I'm qualified but you Negroes aren't qualified.
A: I absolutely agree with that as of 1896, Plessey v. Ferguson [the precedent setting Supreme Court decision legalizing segregated seating on trains]. I agree with him as of that time. If it had been done then I would be with you now. Well if the Plessey v. Ferguson says everybody is equal and the Constitution is color blind and they went through with that, I would say that as of now you have to face up like everybody else and that's not about the race.
Q: A 100 years later?
A: Why of course.
Q: So I say to you how much longer does white America have to make recompense?
A: I don't have the slightest idea. I don't know. I know all that's happened in the past.
http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/interviews/politics.htm
The core joke of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is that of course no civilization would develop personal computers with instant remote database recovery, and then waste this technology to find good drinks.
Steve Jobs has ruined this joke.
