Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun, is an American politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first and to date only female African-American Senator, the first African-American U.S. Senator for the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator in an election, and the first and to date only female Senator from Illinois. From 1999 until 2001, she was the United States Ambassador to New...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth16 August 1947
CountryUnited States of America
Carol Moseley Braun quotes about
New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers - one from either party.
It's hard to be the first. It's almost as if I'm subject to a different level of inspection.
The reason that minorities and women dont have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.
There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.
I've always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome.
I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.
The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.
Well, if you pick a fight with somebody that's smaller than you and you beat them, where's the honor in that?
The Islamic community today is faced with a new version of an old struggle. My late mother used to say it doesn't matter whether you came to this country on the Mayflower or on a slave ship, through Ellis Island or the Rio Grande. We're all in the same boat now.
My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange.
There are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, just permanent interests.
I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.
I am determined to try to rebuild and renew this country in ways that will build community and level the playing field. ... To me, that means making certain that the fight to preserve our civil liberties is waged, making certain the fight against discrimination is waged, making certain that women have opportunity in this country.
Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.