US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 17, The Culture Wars of the Early 90s (Con't)

You all have a much tougher rode to travel. Not only do you have to content with the ever-present bigotry, you must do so with a recent tradition that almost requires you to wallow in excuses. You now have a popular national rhetoric which says that you can't learn because of racism, you can't raise the babies you make because of racism, you can't get up in the mornings because of racism. You commit crimes because of racism. Unlike me, you must not only overcome the repressiveness of racism, you must also overcome the lure of excuses.

—Clarence Thomas speaking at Savannah State College, 1985

Introduction to (and explanation of) this quote series can be found here.  Read this tag to see all of them.